POSTED ON JANUARY 20, 2019 BY HALIMA ABIOLA
How Oba Samuel Adeniran Asusumasa Atewogboye II Was Sentenced To Death For Killing A Baby For Ritual In 1944
The
43rd Alaaye of Efon-Alaaye, Kabiyesi Oba Samuel Adeniran Asusumasa
Atewogboye II, his herbalist and one of his servants and Gabriel
Olabirinjo, were all hanged to death for The Ritual Murder of
15-Month-Old Baby Girl Named Adediwura In 1949
By M. Ogunshakin
On
a Monday morning that started out like every other day, the 10th of
January, 1949, something unbelievably nasty was to occur. An event so
brutal it shook the helpless community to its very core. In the rustic
compound of Mr. Ojo was a 15-month-old baby girl whom he and his
adorable wife joyfully named Adediwura (meaning royalty or crown has
turned to gold). Not bothered with any problem in the world, she was
busy playing.
Unknown to the family, the crown of the
Efon-Alaaye was soon going to turn their own crown into a calabash of
blood. All of a sudden, someone noticed the little girl playing within
the compound was nowhere to be found. It was as if she just vanished.
Ha!
What type of a bad joke is this, the father must have
mused. But it was no joke. After checking every plank and crevice in the
compound, the parents knew something terrible was amiss. Their child
was gone! Just like that!
By that moment, the mother was
already on the edge of lunacy. As the sun became hotter and the day
entered afternoon with her daughter nowhere to be found, the frenzied
woman burst into full-scale madness. She just could not bear it anymore.
She heaved her whole body in the air and landed on the ground, throwing
herself all over the place several times with hot tears streaming down
her face, her non-stop wailings attracted bystanders, neighbours and
sympathizers. Who was playing this crazy joke with a child?
Her hormones boiled, the maternal instincts kicked in, she ran out of the house into the sun and she let out a piercing cry:
My child has been kidnapped!
Confused
and equally worried, her husband and other concerned members of the
compound and family quickly mobilized a small army, had a swift meeting
and they all agreed the next thing was to approach the number one person
in charge of their welfare, their beloved king – the Alaaye of Efon
Alaaye. After all, the king is the father of everyone and if any child
in the community is missing, it is the king’s child who was missing.
With
the speed of light, the chaotic party was soon at the palace. With
pitiful tears in their glassy eyes, hot mucus meandering down their
nostrils and glistening sweat covering their dark tropical skins now
utterly covered with dust and worry, they outlined exactly in weak
voices what happened to the king. With the crown of his ancestors
perched on his head, the Alaaye listened with rapt attention to the
tragedy that was unfolding before his very throne. He told them to
return home that the issue will be looked into.
After several
hours, the Alaaye of Efon-Alaaye, Kabiyesi Oba Samuel Adeniran
Asusumasa Atewogboye II, organized a search party to sniff out the
missing child. But it was all a waste of time. They searched every nook
and corner of the kingdom, called for help from the villagers and police
but nothing that remotely resembled the child was even found.
Exasperated, the colonial representatives and police messaged Lagos for
further help from the Central Investigations Department (CID).
BUT WHERE WAS THE CHILD?
Well,
you will recall that the girl was playing in the compound while her
parents busied themselves with house chores. It was in an instant that
an herbalist pounced on the girl and kidnapped her. He must have been
surveying the compound to know precisely when to attack. He hid the tiny
child under his a flowing traditional garb called an agbada (see photo)
and whisked her off to his house.
At night, he then told his wife to
carry the child on her back to the house of another person. The next
day, while the parents of the child could not sleep, the kidnappers took
the child straight to the palace. The girl was brought before the king,
Kabiyesi Oba Samuel Adeniran Asusumasa Atewogboye II. With a wave of
his authority, the poor girl was butchered right in his presence.
After
the bloody slashings, the king then brought out kolanuts and made
everyone present to swear to an oath of secrecy. Anyone who leaked the
secret was expected to die, according to the useless covenant they had.
The corpse was then mutilated and dismembered, her eyes were gouged out
of their sockets and put in a container carried by a first individual.
Then her tongue was sliced off and put in another container held by a
second individual. Both individuals then ferried these body parts
through a door that led to the living quarters of the Oba To Ba Lori
Ohun Gbogbo (king). What evil can be greater than a leader betraying his
own people?
After completing this phase of their criminal
operation, they took what remained of the lifeless body of the girl to
the forest around the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) Church and
buried it there.
THE POLICE SWINGS IN AND A DRAMATIC TRIAL ENSUES
The
parents remained traumatized and on the 10th of February, 1949, a team
of police detectives (Chief Inspector Aruah, Sergeants Sule Agbabiaka
and Olawaiye and Police Constable Ariyo) stormed Efon-Alaaye. They
commenced work without wasting time and within 48 hours, they were able
to establish that the cute Adediwura may have fallen a victim to the
antics of ritual murderers.
On Monday 14th February, 1949 (a day of
celebration of love), the Daily Times newspaper blew its trumpets as it
reported the criminal case nationwide. The people of the British
protectorate of Nigeria shuddered with terror and recoiled with shock at
such brutality. But unknown to them, the worst was yet to come.
Not
long after the detectives arrived, three suspects linked to the murder
were rounded up and arrested. They were Enoch Falayi, Gabriel Olabirinjo
and Daniel Ojo. Falayi was the native doctor and herbalist mentioned
earlier, he was the personal spiritualist and consultant to the Alaaye
(king), he was the one who kidnapped the girl as she was enjoying her
play. The other two suspects were his messengers.
In early April, the
coroner inquest to the murder opened at the Obokungbusi Hall in Ilesha
under Magistrate WO Egbuna, he was the one in control of that particular
jurisdiction.
But then, something very interesting happened.
The case assumed a new twist when one of those in police custody
decided to leak everything and damn the consequences of the covenant
they had. He confessed and nailed the royal coffin as he mentioned the
name of the king as being the brain behind the whole violent crime.
Kabiyesi Oba Samuel Adeniran Asusumasa Atewogboye II was immediately
arrested. I want to repeat here that at this time, there was no country
called Nigeria, it was a protectorate of the British Empire under King
George VI but the justice system was incredibly efficient and it was
obvious no one was above the law – not even the king, the
second-in-command to the gods. Representing the Crown at this trial was
Mr. Lloyd Crow.
As the people of Efon-Alaaye were trying to
recover from the shock that their arrested monarch could be the brain
behind the most savage killing in the land, the case was then
transferred to Akure High Court. The stage was set for the trial of the
decade.
Justice NS Pollard was the trial judge and before him
were 21 witnesses ready to vomit all forms of evidence. One of them was
Aina Ola and she wasted no time in revealing that it was Enoch Falayi
the herbalist who grabbed Adediwura and stuffed her under his agbada.
To
make things worse for the ritualist masquerading as a herbalist and
native doctor, his own wife, Owomobi, also provided further evidence
saying the child was kept in their house and in the cover of darkness,
she was forced to carry the child on her back to the residence of the
second accused, Gabriel Olabirinjo.
In a testimony that added
more nails to the royal casket, Ojo Olofa on his own testified that the
child was taken to the palace the following day and it was in the
presence of the king that the innocent kid was murdered with brutal
cuts. He also gave further details of what happened to her body parts
and subsequent burial, all mentioned earlier.
Once all the
witnesses gave their evidence, the Crown counsel, Mr. Crow proceeded to
submit that the statements of the three principal witnesses – Aina Ola,
Owomobi and Ojo Olofa were more than enough for the conviction of
Falayi, the crooked herbalist.
But the legal drama was just starting.
The defence counsels launched their own counterattacks as they insisted
that the three witnesses were accomplices and therefore, their evidence
needs to be corroborated.
However, the trial judge, Justice
Pollard, ruled that he was satisfied that Aina Ola could not be
considered as an accomplice and as such, her evidence was enough
corroboration of the concealment of Adediwura at Falayi’s house and the
subsequent transfer of the child to the palace. Thus, Falayi was
pronounced guilty. Gbagam!
That was not all, the Crown
counsel Crow also submitted that the confessional statement provided by
Gabriel Olabirinjo and Ojo Olofa’s evidence was a total corroboration of
the second accused person’s guilt. And it gets more interesting as his
lawyer, Bode Thomas, argued that his client made the statement under
duress and so it should not be accepted as evidence. But again, Justice
Pollard disagreed. He stated that he was satisfied that the accused
evidence was made voluntarily and freely. And without wasting time, the
judge slammed him with a guilty verdict too. But Daniel Ojo was lucky,
he was acquitted for lack of substantial evidence again him.
So
what happened to the criminal king? As for Kabiyesi Oba Adeniran, the
Crown counsel submitted that the evidence revealed clearly that he did
not only have the intention to kill but also took part in the ritual
murder of baby Adediwura. He then directed the court to the evidence of
Ojo Olofa and Owomobi. The prosecuting counsel further prayed to the
court to take into consideration the countenance of the Oba which he
said, already showed him as someone with guilty mind. Okay, now wait for
this.
The lawyer to the king, Chief Obafemi Awolowo (yes the
same African chief on the N100 naira note) fired back. He argued that
since the king rendered helped the parents of the deceased and the
parents by organizing a search part. Awolowo said that alone was enough
to wash the royal robe clean of all blood. He did not stop there, he
said as an Oba, it was possible that some of the enemies of the king
wanted to deal with him by involving him in the gruesome killing.
Awolowo dismissed all the evidence presented against his client: he
branded them as circumstantial.
However, to the
disappointment of Awolowo, Justice Pollard did not agree with him. The
judge said that saying some enemies in the town vowed to implicate the
king in the murder was nothing but a baseless afterthought. In short,
the judge gave Awolowo and legal park well. The worst was yet to come
for Awolowo and his client. The stern trial judge dropped the bomb when
he eventually found the king guilty. The king must have thought he was
having a bad dream when Justice Pollard sentenced him to death. Also
sentenced to the graves were the other accused persons.
NB: Also
integrally involved in this case is a particular Mr. Oye, said to be a
first-class criminal case investigator who made the success of the
prosecution possible.
The accused persons were like laelae
kole happen do you know who we are and so they marched straight to the
West African Court of Appeal (WACA) where they appealed the decision of
the trial court. At WACA, they stood before the Chief Justice of
Nigeria, Justice John Verity who presided with two other justices.
The appellate court listened to their pleas and reached the following conclusions:
Although
the disappearance of the child was reported to the Oba early in the
afternoon, he as the head of the town did nothing until twilight.Five
days after the disappearance, the Oba sent for the constable to say he
had information that the child will be found at the forest near CMS
compound.Upon the arrest of Enoch Falayi, he ordered his release because
he claimed that Falayi was his ‘doctor’.The corps found the mutilated
body exactly where the Oba said the police would find it.
The
court held that even though these findings were circumstantial, the
statements of other accused persons, and the ones read to him by the
police which he confirmed, have already proved his guilt. The court
specifically quoted Gabriel Olabirinjo’s statement read to the Oba by
Sergeant Agbabiaka which the Oba, the Alaaye of Efon-Alaaye did not
deny. The statement went thus:
‘I was in the palace of Alaaye of Efon
at night, I saw Enoch carry one girl under his gown into the palace. He
placed the girl under the staircase in the palace…Enoch left to call
Alaaye…Alaaye came and saw the girl. He said Enoch should do her as he
said he would do her….He carried the cigarette tin (in which the eyes
and tongue were contained) to Oba Alaaye…The following night Oba Alaaye
asked whether the corpse of the girl had been cleared…’
Justice Verity then concluded:
‘With
acceptance of that statement as evidence of tacit admission of the
facts therein, there is not only ample corroboration of the evidence…it
goes further and is evidence of admission of facts from which no other
conclusion is possible than that the appellant counseled and procured
the murder of this child and was rightly found guilty thereof.’
Upon
this final pronouncement, Kabiyesi Oba Samuel Adeniran Asusumasa
Atewogboye II, the 43rd Alaaye of Efon-Alaaye, his herbalist and one of
his servants and Gabriel Olabirinjo, were all hanged to death.
The year was 1949.
Addendum:
John
Verity (1892 – 1970) was a British expatriate judge who was Chief
Justice of Zanzibar from 1939 until he was appointed the Chief Justice
of British Guiana in 1941. He was appointed the Chief Justice of Nigeria
in 1945. After the end of his tenure in Nigeria, he was Commissioner of
Law Revision, Nigeria co-authored a report with Chief Atanda Fatai
Williams (later Chief Justice of Nigeria from 1979 – 1983) on the
revised laws of Western Nigeria.
The West African Court of
Appeal, WACA, was a court which served as the appellate court for the
British colonies of Gold Coast, Nigeria, Gambia, and Sierra Leone.
The
WACA was first established in 1867 as the appellate court for British
possessions in western Africa. It was abolished in 1874, but was revived
in 1928. Jurisdiction over Nigeria ended in 1954. The court became
defunct with the independence of the states which it served. The court
was based in Sierra Leone.
Decisions of the court could be appealed with leave to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Source:- Loyalnigerianlawyer
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