The cannibal Clifford Nwa Orji was arrested by the Police in
February 1999 after cries of Awawu, an emaciated and shacked woman from Agege
gave him away.
According to his confession to the Police, Clifford and his
accomplice, Tahiru have been killing fellow humans for dinner.
People in the neighbourhood always suspected that Clifford
was strangely different.
He used to sell razor blades at the bustling Oshodi market,
before he shifted his abode to a self-created grotto under the highway bridge
in Isolo, where he advertised himself as a native doctor.
Occasionally, he violently chased stray-walkers to his
‘sanctuary’ during day time. In the dead wake of the night, he usually
blanketed the air around with meat-like odour from his special barbeque.
People merely suspected that this barbeque-loving recluse
was not normal; that he was possibly mad, but no one was prepared for the
horrendous discovery of that haunting Wednesday morning.
Clifford Orji was a cannibal-a
man eater!
The discovery sent shock waves throughout
the sprawling metropolis of about seven million people, drawing hundreds of
people to the under-the-bridge abode of Orji, where he also kept a well-kitted
kitchen to prepare cooked and roasted human flesh.
How long Clifford Orji from Enugu
State has been feasting on human flesh in Lagos is unknown till this day. The
actual number of people he slaughtered for dinner is also known as he did not
reveal much during Police interrogations.
A shrill cry of a famished and
emaciated lady waiting to be slaughtered was what gave Orji away that
Wednesday.
The noise attracted passers-by
who not only discovered the woman, but also stumbled on a collection of human
parts in Orji’s make-shift home. Human bones, legs, hands, and freshly cooked
soup with human meat, were discovered.
The uproar triggered by this
shock discovery was said to have attracted men of the Operation Sweep.
Surrounded, Orji attempted to
escape but the Police quickly arrested him and took him to Makinde Police in
Oshodi, nearby. The lady dressed for slaughtering, and who Orji had turned into
a sex slave for several days, was freed and taken to the hospital in Ikeja.
The arrest of another person,
said to be Orji’s accomplice in the human-flesh eating business introduced a
new dimension to the tragedy.
Police found that Orji and his
friend were not just human eaters, they were also human spare-parts sellers, as
money, cheques were said to have been recovered at the make-shift home at the
popular Toyota Bus Stop on Oshodi-Isolo Expressway.
Were Orji and his accomplice mad?
Some people interviewed at the
scene of the tragedy believed they were sane. Some however, did not. People who
frequently passed by Orji’s make-shift home of horror recounted incidents when
they were chased by the iron-wielding Orji.
On the following Thursday, Orji
and his accomplice were paraded to newsmen by the Lagos State Police
Commissioner, Sunday Aghedo.
The Journalists who crowded the
premises of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Lagos Stae Police Command,
Ikeja, covered their noses with handkerchief while interviewing Orji who
claimed to be a native of Enugu State. The State Commissioner of Police
described the two men as human eaters.
On display beside them were
roasted parts of human beings- heads, leg, hand and the abdomen.
One several head wore a permed
hair of a lady identified as Eno, a trader from Akwa Ibom State.
They were arrested with human
parts in their enclave at the local airport area and taken to Makinde Police
Station. They answered questions on homicide at the State Crime Intelligence
Department (SCID). When it was his turn to speak, Orji confessed to the media
men that that were human eaters who had killed over three people, especially
young girls who hawk wares. “We always lured them to our enclave under the
pretext that we want to purchase their wares. Once they are in our net, we
pounce on them and kill them for eatable meat. My colleague is the human hunter
while I am the butcher. We usually go for girls with permed hair” he further
explained.
When asked if he ate human meat
because he couldn’t afford animal meat by a Journalist, Orji replied saying:
“We have been eating human meat for the past seven years before coming to
Lagos”.
“If you are a free man today,
will you still be eating human meat?” Orji was asked again, to which he
replied: “Yes. To me, there is no difference between human and goat meat”, Orji
replied.
Clifford was charged before an
Ebute-Meta Magistrate Court in Lagos on February 19 of the same year. Since
then, he was never tried. On the 17th of August 2012, he died of
unknown causes at the Kirikiri Maximum Prisons, Lagos.
(Culled from OurPage9ja)
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