This elderly woman escaped lynching on Wednesday after she was said to have turned into a human from a bird that was flying with two other birds in the Ajegunle area of Lagos State. Mystery!
An eyewitness, Chike, said he was sitting in front of a compound with his girlfriend when they saw three black birds flying. He the birds were involved in a fight and as he was watching, suddenly, one of them fell into a moving van belonging to the Eko Electricity Distribution Company while the other two flew away.
“The bird suddenly turned to an old woman of about 80. People were shocked as they saw the woman rolling on the road and blood gushing out from her forehead.
“When the crowd was interrogating her, she said she was a witch and that she came from Ibadan for a meeting in Lagos but as they were returning home they missed their way and wasted so much time hovering in the area till daybreak. The woman claimed she fell because she was tired of flying.”
It was learnt that as the woman was about to be lynched, the traditional ruler of Layeni Community, Baale Rafiu Olayeni, arrived the scene and pleaded with the angry people not to take laws into their hands.
Olayeni told Punch that he called the Divisional Police Officer of Layeni Police Division, CSP Chijioke Ndu, and he drafted anti-robbery policemen to the scene, rescued the woman and took her to the station.
The traditional leader said, “People told me the woman fell down as a bird but I did not believe them. I had to rescue the old woman before the mob lynches her as they claimed she was a witch. Sometimes the reasoning of old people could be compared to that of a small child because of the effects of old age.”
At the station, the police found it hard to control the mammoth crowd that had come to see the alleged witch. It was learnt that the DPO had to call for reinforcement from Ajegunle and Amukoko divisions before he could handle the crowd as some people were bent on lynching the woman.
The old woman was subsequently transferred to the Area B Command in Apapa for further investigation. And it is believed she would be sent back to Ibadan, where she hails from. Not as a bird, but as human.
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