Dipo Kehinde/
There is more than one way to skin a cat. Ask the traditional ruler of Lagos, Oba Riliwanu Babatunde Osuolale Aremu Akiolu – a retired Assistant Inspector General (AIG) of Police, who allegedly used alternative detective methods to catch a thief in police uniform.
A Lagos-based paranormal investigator known as Chief (Dr) Deen Ajilekege told the story of the theft, dating back to the time when Oba Akiolu was AIG.
Ajilekege claimed that he was engaged to find the thief that stole 400 Deutschmark (the former standard monetary unit in Germany) from the AIG’s pocket after the police had exhausted their traditional methods of investigation.
He said: “Oba Riliwanu Akiolu got to know me when someone stole his 400 Deutschmark in an envelope kept in his coat. I caught the thief. A mobile policeman stole it. Ask him. He will tell you.
“They asked who took the envelope. They called all the policemen attached to him to find out. The thief I detected was a mobile policeman – a constable. He confessed. From there, many people got to know me.”
Unlike scientific detective work that uses inductive reasoning and deductive logic, Ajilekege does his psychic detective work with mysterious feathers.
Chief Detective learnt that those who go to Ajilekege are asked to hand over a list of names of suspects to the spiritualist whose tools of divination are seven feathers that will rise up and stand erect, when a culprit’s name is scribbled on a piece of paper, squeezed and dropped in a matchbox, to be placed on the feathers, which are laid out in a circle.
But the scientific investigative method, according to the police, involves a way of observing, thinking about, and finally solving problems in an objective, systematic fashion. And the five main steps in the scientific method are: stating the problem, forming the hypothesis, collecting the data by observing and experimenting, interpreting these data, and drawing conclusions.
Like the American Noreen Renier or Lorraine Warrens, Ajilekege claims that when all these fail, people run to him.
Much to his credit, he can boast of the patronage of highly placed men in the society, including traditional rulers, prominent politicians, police and military chiefs.
The late traditional ruler of Lagos, Oba Adeyinka Oyekan, conferred on Ajilekege the chieftaincy title of Baariran (the Seer) of Lagos, and a frontline Fuji musician, Alhaji Kollington Ayinla testified to his wizardry in one of his albums titled Kokoma.
Ajilekege said: “If someone’s money, gold or car is stolen, we can trace the route through which the robbers passed or their location.
“Somebody once stole the late Oba Oyekan’s gold. He called about four Babalawo (oracles) and they couldn’t find the thief. Baba, the late Iskilu Oluwa sent for me to detect it. I detected it and caught Kamila who confessed. That very day I was made the Baariran of Lagos State. The king honoured me for the work done.
“In 1999, when the car of Commodore Jibril Ayinla, a former Chief of Naval Staff, mysteriously disappeared, I caught the thief.
“I have also worked for Kabiyesi Oniru, Elekisi, and Ajiran in Ikate. All of them used the spirit to find missing things and they got them.”
Ajilekege said Air Force officers also patronised him.
His words: “Air-Vice Marshall Elegbede (rtd) came to me during the General Babangida era, when some people stole aircraft spare parts at the Air Force Command Headquarters, Ikeja.
“If you contact him, he will tell you my work is okay. I helped them recover the spare parts. Some of the suspects ran away then, but some were caught.”
The Navy was not left out. In 2003, 70 naval men were moved in a bus from NNS Quorra, Apapa, to Idimu, on the outskirts of Lagos, to face the spiritualist in his shrine inside a storey building at 24, Ajilekege Street, Idimu.
Outside the building stands a medium-sized signpost with the words: Chief (Dr.) Deen Ajilekege – Baariran of Lagos – the Wonderful Thief Catcher – Honoured by Oba Oyekan of Lagos.
The naval men were called out, one by one, to stand before Ajilekege’s feathers to prove their innocence.
Two out of the 70 men, whose names were placed on the feather, failed this ‘test of character’. One of them was the ROG, who was earlier suspected, and a sentry who was on duty on the day of the theft.
The psychic said that the sentry aided the thief, but the two suspects insisted that they were innocent, raising questions about the credibility of the investigative method.
One Uwe Onofiok, who once had an encounter with Ajilekege, said in an interview: “The feather rose against me in 1993. There was a guy who stood on a stone there and the feather did not rise. He turned out to be the thief.”
But, before the thief was caught, Onofiok said he had spent three days in detention and three months under suspension.
Onofiok was a staff of Chemiron in 1993 when raw materials in aluminium containers exactly the size of small stout bottles were stolen from the company.
The cold room where the containers were kept could only be opened in the presence of three officials in the production and audit departments.
According to Onofiok, it took four months before the police could bust the crime.
When staffers of Chemiron were taken to Ajilekege’s shrine, Onofiok refused to stand before the feathers because of his Christian faith. Eventually, the feather rose when his name was fed to them. It was later discovered that the raw materials were stolen by two of the company’s staff, who tried to sell them through a man, who at the end of the day couldn’t find a buyer.
“They sold it on their own,” Onofiok said. “One of the guys, who sold it and bought a car, began to chase the girlfriend of the man who couldn’t sell. So the man went to Chemiron and blew the lid off the criminal activity.
“Police found money stashed in the refrigerator of one of the suspects who worked in the Purchasing Department. He was about to get new accommodation.”
Ajilekege’s shrine is always busy. Everyone with a problem had to obtain a form marked ‘Law Agreement Form’ in an office on the ground floor at the entrance to the building.
One day, three boys who said they were undergraduates of the Lagos State University (LASU) came to find out who stole a classmate’s mobile phone.
One of them said he believed that Ajilekege would catch the thief as he did two years earlier when they brought some people before him.
The Ajilekege shrine is a place full of curiosity. A corner of the shrine is studded with various feather slates. In the background is a crimson red cloth, bristling with cowries.
For Ajilekege, catching thieves is just a piece of cake.
In a move to erase all doubts, he demonstrated how his magic works.
He requested a biro and a piece of paper which he tore into four equal parts.
He handed one to this reporter to fill in his name and gave the remaining to three other persons to do likewise. The papers were later folded and squeezed. He asked if the reporter could identify his own.
The reporter said no. Then, the preambles began.
“As the papers were, in turn, dropped into the matchbox and placed on the feathers, a young man stood by Ajilekege holding a small, strange-looking cone-like object to his mouth like a wireless microphone. The sleepy feathers would then be covered with a dome-like beaded bowl.
Each time a paper was fed to the feathers, he would say: “Ajilekege, if the name before you is that of the journalist here, let the feathers rise.”
Then, he would pick up a handy gourd and shake it vigorously as he chants some incomprehensible incantations with maximum concentration. The bowl will then be lifted to see the state of the feathers.
Nothing happened until the third piece of paper was fed to the feathers. The bowl was lifted and there they were, the seven feathers standing like phallic symbols.
“There you are,” Ajilekege said with an air of satisfaction. His face creased into a smile as he removed the paper from the matchbox and handed it to this reporter, who was surprised to find his name on it.
Before the display, Ajilekege had spent some time trying to establish his credentials as a ‘wonderful thief catcher’, casting his mind back to how it all began.
He brought out a citation that disclosed that he was born in June at Olodi-Apapa in Lagos. He had a brief education at St. Jude’s Primary School, Ebute Metta from 1958 to 1960. He couldn’t finish his primary education because he was found missing one afternoon. He was in standard three then.
It was later discovered that a whirlwind took him to the world beyond.
He wasn’t found until three years later, by his father at Oyingbo market.
By then, he was paralyzed in his legs and arms.
He was taken to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, where he was attended to by the Chief Medical Consultant, Dr Bailey. All efforts to cure his paralysis failed, and he was given artificial legs.
His father later took him to his village – Adeo, near Odeda local government, in Ogun State, where he was cured with the power of the spirit called Ajilekege, which belongs to his grandparents.
When he was fully cured, his father enrolled him in a school in the village. There, he passed his First School Leaving Certificate Examination.
He didn’t go further because the spirit said he should no longer go to school but serve him. His father trained him as a spiritualist and taught him how to work for the Ajilekege spirit.
A colourful and compelling character, Ajilekege said that if the police recognized him, all their problems, like arresting robbers, and recovering cars, would be solved.
“Police know me with this job,” he said. “But this is a private, not government business. The law doesn’t believe in it. The police are not in support. They say it’s against the law.”
Indeed, Mr Emmanuel Ighodalo, a police officer, who is also a lawyer, described Ajilekege’s method of investigation as crude.
He said: “They’re illegal and cannot stand the test of time. We have had cases in the past whereby innocent people were picked by such means or medium. And we discovered that they’re not the people. And police brought out, through discreet investigation, perpetrators of such crime.
“So we don’t support that way; we don’t attest to it and we don’t give in to it.
“We don’t recognize the use of voodoo, the use of native means or unconventional means in detecting crime or in the investigation of crime, because they’re not tenable in the law court.
“Because the police are very vital in the criminal justice administration, also are the courts, and so are lawyers. So, the magistrates and justices don’t recognize that method. It is so worldwide.”
The spokesman said that anybody who was laying claim to having the ability to detect criminals was doing it at his own risk. “If such a person is taken up before the law, the law will catch up with him. Civil litigation can even be instituted against the person by those who he has pointed his fingers at.”
Ajilekege, however, argued that the police were following the Western culture rather than embracing the African tradition.
He said: “Before corn was created, fowls had been eating. Before the arrival of Christianity, we were using our forefathers’ methods of investigation.
“You know the police are government officials. We are private practitioners. As you have Christians, you have Muslims and traditional medicine practitioners. Christians and Muslims may say they’re not going to the house of a herbalist or native doctor, but there are people who know that our fathers’ culture is still alive. Pastors do come here, Muslims come, but some people say they are born-again and they cannot come.
“You know if we use Ogun, the god of iron, or Sango, the god of thunder, to swear in our courts, people will not lie anyhow. We have those who swear with the Bible or Quran and still bear false witness. If you use Ogun to swear and bear false witness, Ogun will kill you.”
While the police in Nigeria are sceptical, authorities in the U.S.A have embraced psychic detectives such as Renier, who now lectures at the FBI Academy.
She is reported to have assisted law-enforcement officials working on more than 600 criminal cases.
Chief Detective magazine visited Iga Iduganran palace twice after several phone calls, but Oba Akiolu was not available to say more on his experience with Ajilekege.
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