By Bamidele Kolawole
More information have emerged in the case of the General Overseer of a Pentecostal Church in Igbara-Oke, Serah Abuloye, who is now facing trial over the death of Adefunke Aselogbon, a pregnant woman that allegedly died within her church after she was stabbed in the neck.
It was gathered that the victim, a 37-year-old was brought to the church for deliverance by her second husband.
According to impeccable sources, the deceased had spent five days in the church during which the General Overseer was conducting prayer for her.
However, it was alleged that when the General Overseer discovered the woman had died in her church, she allegedly called some other members to evacuate her corpse to a bush at the back of the church.
According to her second statement to the police which the prosecution said it was a confessional one, she said: “I woke up on Thursday January 6, 2022 after a vigil and discovered the victim soaked with blood all over her cloth.
“I checked her and I discovered there was an open injury on her neck. I raised an alarm and a man going to his farm whom I don’t know his name met me at the spot, I called my two sons that stayed with me namely Celestina and Tobiloba for help. They assisted me to carry the corpse and dropped it in cocoa farm close to my church before I left to Igbara-Oke police station.”
She said that she moved the corpse out of the church due to fear so as to prevent her name and that of her church from being smeared that maybe she used the deceased for ritual.
She however maintained before the police that she did not know how the deceased was killed neither did she participate in the killing.
That was her second statement to the police.
At the onset of the investigation, she claimed in her first statement to the police that she did not know the whereabouts of the deceased.
Giving her background information, the accused person who is a native of Ipetumodu in Ife North Local Government area of Osun State, stated that she worked as a health worker at Olorunda Village via Igbara-Oke for 23 years, before she received a call to work as a clergy in 2009.
She narrated that she established her church and named it All Saints Church of Christ located at Isarun along Igbara-Oke Road.
She stated: ” I don’t have maternity clinic in my church and I don’t take delivery unless the pregnant woman is in the church during our church programme and urgent attention is needed.’
She told the police that she knew the deceased through her husband, one Rasak Gbadamosi who used to come to the church for prayer with his first wife and his children.
On January 2, 2022, she said that the pregnant woman with her daughter came to meet her for prayers and deliverance and told her that someone introduced her to them, and she had requested for her husband.
The prophetess said that it was when her husband came to meet her that she realized Gbadamosi Rasak was also the husband to the pregnant woman.
“When she came, she complained to me that she was having stomach ache. I then gave her spiritual water to drink and bath which she did and she was relieved.
I advised the husband to go back home with his wife but she pleaded with me to allow her to stay with me in the church. and he left the woman with me in my church from Sunday till Wednesday January 5, 2022,” she said.
She stated that when her husband did not come on Wednesday, she noticed that the woman was crying and she told her to call her husband, but she said that she was not with phone.
The prophetess said the deceased wanted to go to her husband but the prophetess said that she disallowed her because it was already late.
Around 4 a.m on January 6, 2022, Abuloye said that she did not see the woman and had called her husband to inform him that his wife has left the church.
About 4 p.m, the daughter of the woman came to the church and asked for her mother, she said that she told her that her mother had left the church.
She stated that all efforts made to search for her by her husband proved abortive.
She had later gone to Igbara Oke police station purportedly to lodge a missing person’s complaint.
According to an impeccable source, the head of the deceased had been removed before it was deposited in the mortuary.
As soon as the prophetess showed up at police station, the police detained her over allegations of murder.
The Police Prosecutor, Obadasa Ajiboye, informed the court that the defendant dumped the corpse of Adefunke Aselogbon, aged 37, in a bush behind her church on January 6, 2022.
He said she committed the offence at about 4.00am at the surroundings of her church along Isarun road, Igbara-oke.
The charge sheet read in part,”That you, Serah Abuloye, did conspire to commit felony, to wit: murder and thereby committed an offence, contrary to and punishable under Section 324 of the Criminal Code, Cap. 37, Vol. 1, Laws of Ondo State of Nigeria, 2006.
“That you, Serah Abuloye and others at large on the same date, time and place in the aforementioned Magisterial District, did kill and dump one Adefunke Aselogbon, aged 37, in a bush at the back of your church and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 319(1) of the Criminal Code, Cap. 37, Vol. 1, Laws of Ondo State of Nigeria, 2006.”
The plea of the defendant was not taken.
Obadasa, therefore, made an oral application to remand the defendant in prison custody pending the outcome of advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
According to him, the body of the deceased had been deposited at the mortuary.
Counsel to the defendant, Mrs Ola Adedire, did not oppose the prosecutor’s application.
In his ruling, Magistrate Damilola Sekoni, ordered the remand of the defendant at Yaba Prison in Ondo.