THE STORY OF OTOKOTO MONEY RITUAL KILLINGS OF 1996.
On 19th September 1996, during the regime of late General Sani Abacha’s, in the city of Owerri – Imo State, an innocent 11-year-old boy named Anthony Ikechukwu Okoronkwo was murdered for Ritual purposes.
The little boy was hawking boiled groundnuts, which was his daily routine. He strolled along, selling his groundnuts for peanuts to whoever wanted to buy.
When he got to Amakohia area of Owerri, his eyes lit up with joy when a customer beckoned on him to approach. That ‘customer’ was named Innocent Ekeanyanwu, aged 32.
The boy was called into the famous Otokoto Hotel and the little groundnut seller was visibly very excited since it was a hotel, it meant that the new ‘customer’ would probably be buying plenty groundnuts which will mean more money to take home to make his parents happy and assist his struggling family.
While waiting, the boy was treated like a guest, he was given a bottle of Coca-Cola to cool off from the punishing heat of tropical Africa.
Innocently, he took the Coke and gulped it with relish. As he was sipping his soft drink and taking a look at the glittering surrounding of the hotel, he could have imagined having a hotel of his own too later in the future. As he was dreaming, his vision became blurry and the sounds around him became muzzled and dull.
In a matter of minutes, he dozed off, never to wake up again. His tray full of groundnuts was lying in a corner. Observing the boy from a safe distance was the man who had called him to buy his groundnuts. He had spiked the boy’s drink and once he saw he was asleep, he took the limp body of the drugged lad into one of the hotel rooms and what followed next remains one of the evilest things anyone can ever dream up. A sharp cutlass emerged from nowhere and the boy’s head was severed from his body. He was beheaded in a matter of minutes.
After the boy’s head was cut off, he disembowelled his torso, removed his liver and other parts he needed. Not done yet, the boy’s genitals were not spared as well. After butchering the boy, and sorting out the organs, he packed his head inside a polythene bag and buried his remains. The Butcher, Ekeanyanwu then took the polythene bag containing the boy’s head and headed for the next destination: to the house of the man who needed the fresh head. The man who is behind it all.
HOW DID THE INFORMATION LEAK OUT:
After the grisly murder of the little Okoronkwo by Mr Innocent Ekeanyanwu (what a name, innocent indeed), he left the hotel to deliver the head where it was needed. He then Stopped a Bike man (Okada rider) to convey him to the place.
It was the Okada man named Opara, whom he stopped to take him to his destination in Eziama that realized that was his passenger was carrying inside a polythene bag was a fresh human head. It was still dripping with blood. When he alighted,the Okada man quickly alerted the police. The Police then intercepted Ekeanyanwu on his way back in a Peugeot 504 car, he was carrying the head with him in the polythene bag. He was going to the residence of a highly-influential figure named Chief Leonard Unaogu at Eziama, Ikeduru Local Council Area with the head but upon arriving, he was told Mr Unaogu had gone to Lagos. So Ekeanyanwu had no other option but to return to Owerri with the boy’s head.
When it was time to take the headless body of Ikechukwu to the local mortuary, there was a massive procession and protested by Owerri people. People came out in 1000s to protest the boys ritual killing. They stayed around and within the hotel premises, waited for the police to confirm that it was indeed a ritual murder while more were matching and trooping to the scene of the Ritual Murder as the news was spreading. It was in the midst of this tension that the local media station made its miscalculation. They showed the image of Innocent Ekeanyanwu holding the head of his victim.
The goal of the media was to assure the people, assuage public fear, ask the public to help identify the boy and show official transparency but what followed next was a catastrophe. All hell broke loose as the enraged people of Owerri went haywire after the image was the first broadcast on the 24th of September. All Owerri residents abandoned their businesses and congregated at the town’s central marketplace. It was there they decided on the next plan of action and outlined their strategies to deal with the Otokoto ‘headhunters’. The news spread rapidly, every home in Owerri had heard the news or seen the image of Okoronkwo’s head or his shallow grave. Unemployed and disgruntled youths took over the parks and issued threats to the Owerri millionaires.
From the Owerri main market, the riots exploded and spread. The pattern of destruction was neat. The rampaging crowd first went to the morgue and from there, they rushed to the Otokoto Hotel and burnt it to the ground. From there, they went to the nearby palatial mansion of Chief Vincent Duru and destroyed his property, his expensive cars were wrecked and Duru himself narrowly escaped. From there, the crowd split into attack groups and spread out to other sites of the privileged elite and unleashed maximum destruction.
The well-known Piano Plaza and Stores, alongside another hotel, Chibet Hotel, and various businesses linked to the Otokoto and their associates were utterly destroyed. The Zubairu-led government later confiscated all the properties as recommended by the panel which was headed by Justice PC Onumajuru.
From there, they rushed to the palace of the traditional ruler and chairman of the state council of traditional rulers, Eze Onu Egwu Nwoke (later indicted alongside Aneke and Abure by the panel of inquiry) and burnt down his residence and his petrol station. They also destroyed the king’s 15 air conditioners and many of his cars.
They were not done yet. From there, the crowd ‘troops’ headed for the residences of former Imo State officials. These administrators were targeted because of what was described as ‘their alleged unwillingness to properly tackle several cases of ritual murder, kidnapping and robbery while in office.’ The angry rioters only agreed to calm down when the military administrator (MILAD), assured them that a full, state-level investigation of the incident was going to be launched. Ekeanyanwu, who murdered the boy, was aged 32 and he worked as a gardener inside the Otokoto Hotel.
THE INVESTIGATION
Following the arrest of Ekeanyanwu, he was remanded in police custody while awaiting trial. But while he was in the police custody, magic happened! He was killed by food poisoning 4days after. He killed the boy on Thursday and by Sunday morning, he was found Dead. But luckily for the interrogators, before he was killed, Ekeanyanwu confessed and mentioned Leonard Unaogu as the brain behind the ritual killing syndicate. He confessed that the ritual killing ring was a well-organized machine that specialized in the harvesting of human body parts and sold them to those interested in using them for rituals and all the usual nonsense they claimed to be using them for.
He also said it was Unaogu who ordered him to get a human head.
Reports have it that the Otokoto saga had been in place as far back as 1976. Confessional statements revealed that no one was spared at the Otokoto Hotel. Innocent guests and unsuspecting travellers who lodged at the hotel were drugged or attacked in the middle of their sleep and hacked to death after which they were cut into pieces for sale. Police officers who swooped upon the hotel discovered not only the shallow grave containing that of the little boy but also graves containing other victims with their decomposing and dismembered corpses.No one knows the exact exhumed at Otokoto Hotel was up to 24 bodies. Some were buried at inconspicuous locations such as under the flowerbeds. Such evil, such horror! The man that Ekeanyanwu mentioned before he was poisoned to death, Leonard Unaogu, was a business tycoon. And he was the junior brother to Laz Unaogu, a serving minister under Abacha.
Leonard Unaogu was eventually arrested by the police.
When the police arrested Unaogu, he lied with a straight face that he never knew anyone called Innocent Ekeanyanwu and that he was not even in Owerri when the crime was committed, saying he was in Lagos.
THE TRIAL AND JUDGEMENT:
The trial started on the 9th of December, 1996, with Hillary Ngozi Opara as the first prosecution witness. Nine people testified before Justice S.O Ekpe, who took over from Justice Gabriel Ojiako, the retired chief judge of Imo State, during the trial. The court also admitted the confessional statement of Innocent Ekeanyanwu. Margaret Acholonu, a receptionist at the hotel, stated that two spots were dug at the hotel premises and it was from the second one that the body of Okoronkwo was exhumed. She also implicated Chief Duru.
She also said that on that fateful day, she saw Ekeanyanwu with a black bag and he told her he was going to his village at Eziama A sergeant, Sunday Onwucheka, told the court he was in the office when Ekeanyanwu was arrested with a fresh human head of the innocent boy. According to Onwucheka, before the police took Ekeanyanwu to Otokoto Hotel, the crime scene, he confessed to killing the boy at Mba River in Ikeduru and dumped the body inside the river. The police followed the false trail but found nothing at the Mba River.
So at about 7:00 pm on the 20th of September, they returned to Owerri. The following Monday, they continued with their investigation and took him to Otokoto Hotel where the headless body of the boy had already been identified before the police team arrived. On 20th August 1997, a senior magistrate court in Owerri docked 9 police officers.
For the murder of Ekeanyanwu. They were:
Ifeanyi Anozie, an assistant commissioner of police
Chukwu Obasi, an assistant superintendent of police:
Kevin Ezirim
Christian Nnazi
Clifford Odiaka
Felix Nnorom
Christopher Aguobi
Ignatius Igwe
James Ibezere
Josephat Nwosu
The case snailed on till 14th October 1997, over a year, and after series of adjournments, absence of lawyers, the Presiding judge, suspects or even the retirement of judges or their transfer etc.
When the case finally resumed, many were pissed off. Leonard Unaogu, the minister’s brother, was transported in a new station wagon from the prison to the court like a royalty. Vincent Duru and other suspects were brought in a Black Maria from prison to the court, with handcuffs. Duru protested the preferential treatment given to Unaogu.
Many judges handled the case. First, it was Gabriel Ojiaku, then Simeon Ekpe who was almost done with the prosecution until he was elevated to Court of Appeal.
Then finally on 28th April 1999, Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme.Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme Judgment: She Sentenced All the seven suspects to death, they were:
Chief Vincent Duru. The owner of the Otokoto Hotel and Unaogu denied knowing each other, but Justice Nwosu-Iheme said that was a lie.
He appealed the sentence in 2012 but he was unlucky as the sentence was upheld by the Appeal Court
Leonard Unaogu: He would later die some years ago at the Port Harcourt Prisons in what has been described as very mysterious circumstances.
Researcher: Comr Olamide Akinwumi James
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