Badoo: No tight security, no vigil, says police CP

Lagos Acting CP, Imohimi Edgal

•’Most killings occur in churches’

•Curfew imposed on Ikorodu

To stem the Badoo menace, the police yesterday barred churches and mosques in Ikorodu and environs from holding vigil without tight security.

Acting Lagos State Police Commissioner Imohimi Edgal warned that he would arrest and charge with murder any pastor in whose church ritualists kill worshippers during vigil.

He spoke at a stakeholders’ meeting on how to ensure peace in Ikorodu hours before Badoo struck, killing a pastor and wounding his family members.

“Henceforth, no pastor should organise a vigil in Ikorodu without adequate security arrangement. Do not organise any vigil if you cannot protect the lives of the people who attend,” the police chief said.

Majority of the ritual killings, he said, took place on the church premises, adding that in most cases, the pastors would have concluded their prayers and left before the murderers would attack vulnerable women and children.

The meeting, which was held at the palace of the Ikorodu monarch, Oba Abdulrasheed Shotobi, started around 10:30pm on Saturday and ended around 1am yesterday. It followed resumed Badoo killings.

According to Edgal, the police were soliciting for the collaboration of all interest groups in Ikorodu to bring the gang to book.

He said: “All churches and mosques should not have vigil in isolated locations and pastors leave them to go home and they attack the women and children.

The Nation