The suspect
According to a report by Punch Metro, a self-acclaimed evangelist,
Mr Akinjide Durojaiye, was on Thursday beaten to a pulp for allegedly
stealing two new Tecno mobile phones from a shop within the Femi Johnson
Building in the Dugbe area of Ibadan, Oyo State.
The 49-year-old man, who claimed to be an evangelist at the Dominion
Assembly, Ilare-Ijesa in Osun State, said he was in the shop, where
mobile phones and accessories were being sold, to preach the gospel to
all the people he found there.
Durojaiye claimed that he came from Ilare-Ijesa to Ibadan on an
evangelisation mission, adding that the ‘spirit’ directed him to the
shop to preach to the attendants and others.
He was said to have been apprehended by the attendants and other
onlookers while trying to escape with the two phones valued at N70,000.
One of the shop attendants, who gave his name simply as Tunde, said he
did not notice when the evangelist pilfered the phones, which were on
display, saying he and the others were already carried away by his
preaching.
While being chased by the attendants and neighbours, Durojaiye was said
to have hidden in a store within the complex, but was located by an
attendant in another shop after which he was brought out and beaten,
while the phones were recovered from him.
The self-acclaimed evangelist, who clutched a copy of the Holy Bible to
his chest, attributed the incident to the work of the devil, adding that
his attempt to get money to treat his seven-year-old son, who is on
admission in a hospital in Osun State, pushed him into committing the
crime.
Durojaiye, a father of four, said the son, whose name he gave as
Oluwadurosinmi, jumped down from a two-storey building in Ilare-Ijesa
and was hospitalised because of the injuries he sustained.
He also claimed that his wife had divorced him and left him to take care of the children alone.
The man was later released due to the intervention of some persons in
the neighbourhood, who had thronged the scene of the incident.