The violence of a 40-year-old man against his supposed girlfriend and her lover is graphic by any standard.
A Batelsa man, Etifa Obukulubu, was arrested in October for locking the door of an apartment and setting ablaze two people to their deaths. Why he perpetrated such violence?
On December 15, Obukulubu was paraded, and he explained that the reason he set ablaze his girlfriend and the man whom he said was her lover, was because he saw them having sex.
According to an earlier Guardian report, the pastor, working with the New Baptist Church and a female assistant were burnt to death when Obukulubu set the home of the pastor on fire over suspicion of infidelity.
Obukulubu corroborated the story when he was paraded at the Police headquarters in Bayelsa.
He said: “It was due to anger that I carried out the arson. We have been dating for four years and this year, between October 30 and 31, I realised that my girlfriend was always going to the pastor’s house each time I was not at home.
“When I found out the affair between the pastor and my girlfriend, I became angry and all I could think of at the time was to set them ablaze. It was anger that made me set them ablaze. I caught them red-handed sleeping on the bed after I peep through the window,” he said.
Obukulubu was not the only person paraded on that day. 44 other suspects of various crimes were also paraded. Among them were five suspects arrested for attacking the home of the former governor of Bayelsa state, Seriake Dickson, and killing of a police inspector at Toru Orua community of Sagbama Local Government Area.
A 41-year-old civil servant with the state’s Ministry of Education was also paraded for allegedly raping a lady that had just completed her mandatory National Youths Service Corps (NYSC).
The police commissione, Mike Okoli, said during the parade of the suspects that the police would not relent in making Bayelsa unsafe for criminals.
