House of Horror
Murder and Witchcraft in Nigeria's Ibadan
This photograph depicts the interior of an abandoned home, located on the outskirts of the southwestern Nigerian city of Ibadan.
It’s quite clearly a mess, with clothes, buckets and plastic bags strewn around the room; and on first viewing, it makes for a chaotic but otherwise innocuous tableau.
Yet there is a deeply chilling significance to the items presence and placement; and following the home’s discovery, what was unearthed caused such violent public disorder, that almost two dozen people were near fatally wounded in the riots that followed.
This is the story...
...of the Ibadan House of Horror.
A few miles outside of Ibadan lies a sea of greenery, known by the locals as the Soka Forest.
It is a wild and impoverished area, where many of the people simply cannot afford their own motor vehicles.
In light of that, a burgeoning motorcycle taxi industry sprang up, where those that could afford a sturdy, off-road capable means of transport made money by offering rides to those who needed them.
It proved to be a highly competitive industry, yet those who entered it discovered a culture of solidarity among their fellow drivers. Just because they were in competition with one another didn’t mean they couldn’t look out for one another.
So, in early 2014, when a number of motorcycle taxi drivers went missing in and around the city of Ibadan, it caused a deep concern among their fellow drivers.
A small group of them formed an impromptu search party, and during late March, they began a tireless search of the area in which the drivers had gone missing. That area being the Soka Forest.
Eventually the group came across what appeared to be a large, abandoned house.
Such structures are commonplace in the area, and many others had been searched without result. But in this one, the drivers found something horrifying.
Sitting in one of the rooms were several, chained up prisoners, people that were later described as “living skeletons”.
It’s not clear if the missing taxi driver was among them, but as one member of the search party rushed to contact the local police force, the rest of the team began to explore the other rooms of the house.
It was in these other rooms that they found the possessions of those that had been captured and imprisoned, and the sheer number of items suggested that many more people had been kidnapped during the preceding months.
In another room, they found what they could only assume were the remains of these people, as a collection of bloodstained skulls, bones and decomposing bodies was uncovered.
Swarms of buzzing, engorged flies crawled over almost every surface, with the search party saying that the stench of death was almost unbearable.
The survivors claimed that they had been kidnapped by a group of bloodthirsty occultists, people who intended to harvest their body parts before selling them on to affluent Nigerians and politicians who use human flesh for ritualistic purposes.
The discovery of the House of Horror, along with the subsequent media reports, generated a huge amount outrage and controversy all over Nigeria.
Then, following a visibly slow response from local law enforcement, some began to claim that the State Police had refused to investigate the kidnapping on the orders of high-ranking politicians.
These rumors were coupled with reports that the kidnappers had claimed to be the officials of the urban renewal initiative coordinated by the Oyo State government.
As word of such things spread through the surrounding villages, scores of furious locals descended on the house, demanding justice and berating police officers for their perceived inaction.
“We want to rescue our people who are still underground and crying for help. But the police are saying no, and we are angry”, one rioter was quoted as saying.
In response to the outrage, the local governor visited the scene to assure residents that those responsible would be punished.
“Those behind this dastardly act will be punished by God”, he said, “but we too will punish them when we get them”.
He’d hoped his words would discourage a full-blown riot, but as the locals entered a feverish state of righteous fury, a heavy amount of violence broke out between police and demonstrators.
Around twenty of them were injured in the melee, with police later stating that six people, including five security guards allegedly armed with guns, bows and arrows, were arrested at the scene.
In many rural areas of Nigeria, the belief in black magic and ritual still holds a great deal of sway, and many of the less educated turn to the trade in body parts to support their families.
Deprivation turns the desperate into murderers, as they seek to serve various shamans and herbalists, who often convince them that they are subject to magical forces they have no hope of comprehending.
In one anonymous interview, a young man who referred to himself only as ‘Shodipe’ claimed he once worked for a shaman named Adedokun, killing and collecting parts for money and food.
“Anytime I wanted to go for killing, Baba Adedokun would give me some charms and also teach me some incantations to recite so that nobody would see me at the scene of the crime”, he said, “I would hit the victim with a shovel and recite the incantation the moment I see blood coming out of the victim’s body”
“Baba instructed me to always move around the victims at the scene after killing them and then turn my back at them for at least three minutes”, he continued, “if I did that, then nobody would see me.”
“Baba said the spirits of the victims would come to him after I had killed them, but did not tell me the reason for the killings. After I carried out his orders, he would buy food for me and give me money”.
To this day, no one had been held properly responsible for the crimes committed at the House of Horrors, it seems to have been dismissed as yet another ritual killing spree, in a country where such things happen with terrifying frequency.
Even worse is the fact that larger, bloodier houses of horror have been uncovered all over Nigeria since the one in Ibadan was discovered. One Nigerian newspaper claims that one such house contained literally hundreds of prisoners
One or two locals suspected of having facilitated the kidnappings have been arrested and charged, but not a single ringleader or buyer has been unmasked, and until then, it seems more than likely than even more houses of horror are fated to be discovered all over West Africa and beyond.