The cleric, before his murder, was said to be in charge of the mosque in Iberekodo where he mainly taught the Quran.
An elder brother to the cleric, Taiwo Obadina, told Lagos Metro:
“On the day of the incident, my brother had just left the mosque, when he went to Iya Biliki’s shop that the two of them could go home together.
"Iya Biliki was preparing to go home, when the soldier came and asked about the guy who snatched his girlfriend but the woman quickly responded that nobody was in her shop, apart from Alfa.
“The soldier was said to have enquired about Alfa and asked to see the Islamic scholar, who by then was not in front of the shop, where they were standing. Alfa came out of the shop only for the soldier to start slapping, kicking and punching him.
“Iya Biliki ran to the neighbourhood to call residents to come and rescue Alfa but the soldier had taken him away, before they arrived. Not even the vigilante members on the area could rescue Alfa from the soldier.”
A cousin to the deceased, Adewale Akinsanya, also explained that “it was already late in the night and people could not go to the barracks that night so they concluded that they would go and bail him the following day. When they got to the barracks, the army officials told them that there was nobody with such names in their custody and they even said that nobody was brought in there the previous night. It was later in the afternoon of the following day that they saw his body by the road side, not too far from the barracks.”
“The soldier was said to have enquired about Alfa and asked to see the Islamic scholar, who by then was not in front of the shop, where they were standing. Alfa came out of the shop only for the soldier to start slapping, kicking and punching him.
“Iya Biliki ran to the neighbourhood to call residents to come and rescue Alfa but the soldier had taken him away, before they arrived. Not even the vigilante members on the area could rescue Alfa from the soldier.”
A cousin to the deceased, Adewale Akinsanya, also explained that “it was already late in the night and people could not go to the barracks that night so they concluded that they would go and bail him the following day. When they got to the barracks, the army officials told them that there was nobody with such names in their custody and they even said that nobody was brought in there the previous night. It was later in the afternoon of the following day that they saw his body by the road side, not too far from the barracks.”
Lagos Metro gathered that the army officials brought out some of their officers and Iya Biliki was able to identify the soldier, who perpetrated the act.
The matter was reported at Badagry police station and was subsequently taken to the homicide section of the State Criminal Investigations Department (SCID).
The remains of the Islamic scholar was last week buried, after almost a month of trying to conduct an autopsy to ascertain the cause of his death.
Attempts to get Iya Biliki, the eyewitness were unsuccessful as she was said to have fled the neighbourhood, due to persistent harassment by the alleged killer soldier’s colleagues, for identifying the culprit.
Meanwhile, police at the SCID of the Lagos State Police Command confirmed the death of the deceased and added that investigations were on going.
A senior police officer from the SCID, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said that the police were making “the necessary documentation to arrest the suspect.”
“You know he is a soldier and we cannot just arrest him at the barracks like that. We want to write to the Army authority for them to hand over the suspect to us for prosecution.”
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