A 20-year-old female, Joan Egemba, was on Thursday, March 3, stabbed and strangled to death in Ijebu Igbo, Ogun state.
According to Punch Newspapers, Joan, who was a candidate for the 2016
Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), had left her home in
the Odo Eran, Sabgo-Ota area, for Awa Ijebu -where she was supposed to
sit for her UTME exam the next day.
She was said to have been kidnapped at Ijebu Oru junction and her
corpse was later discovered in a bush at Ijebu Igbo with cuts on her
thighs and her pants torn.
Speaking on the horrifying incident, Joan’s father, Emmanuel Egbema,
who is a a retired Assistant Superintendent of Nigerian Customs, said
that: “On that Thursday, she left home around 12.30pm, but the bus she
boarded at Sango to the centre left around 2pm. She called at 5.30pm
that she had arrived there, but the security man at the centre did not
open the gate for her and others to pass the night on the premises. I
told her to find a place in the area till the following day when she
would sit for the exam.”
“Around 7pm, I called her again and she said the security man had
opened the gate for them. One hour after, I called again but she did not
pick her calls. She was supposed to sit for the exam at 6.30am on
Friday.”
“I called her around 12pm on Friday, her phone was switched off. As
early as 4am on Saturday, I went to the centre to verify whether she sat
for the exam or not. I met the security man and he directed me to the
JAMB office in Abeokuta. He denied that he allowed my daughter into the
school compound to pass the night.”
|It was a woman that told us that a girl was kidnapped at Oru
Junction and taken towards Ijebu Igbo. We later discovered her corpse on
Wednesday, March 9. If the candidates were allowed to sleep inside the
school, this incident would not have happened.”
“I learnt it was rapists that killed her. Her body was not mutilated,
but she had cuts in the mouth and thighs. Her clothes and briefs were
torn and she had bruises in the back. We prayed before she left home on
that day. While we were praying this morning (Monday) I looked at where
she used to sit and it was vacant.”
The police at Ijebu Igbo was reported to have said that they were overwhelmed by the spate of crime in the area.
However, the Ogun State Police spokesperson, DSP Muyiwa Adejobi, when
contacted, said “we are working on the information we have to get the
culprits. Investigation is still ongoing and we are contacting our ICT
experts on how we can track down the culprits.”