… Police Recover Bodies From Soakaway Pit
Daud Olatunji
The Delta State Police Command has arrested a 20-year-old herbalist, Amechi Okwuokenye, and his 26-year-old stepbrother, Smart Okwuokenye, over the gruesome murder of two victims — Friday Liberty, 22, and a commercial motorcycle rider, Isioma Ugbeje — whose decomposing bodies were found in a soakaway pit beside the suspects’ shrine in Owa-Alidima, Ika North East Local Government Area of the state.
According to a statement by the Police Public Relations Officer, SP Bright Edafe, the arrest followed a petition lodged by the family of the late Liberty, who had gone missing after visiting the herbalist on September 30, 2025.
Edafe said the family’s efforts to locate Liberty proved abortive until his girlfriend revealed that she overheard a conversation linking him to the herbalist.
When contacted, the suspect denied seeing the victim but deceitfully offered to perform “spiritual incantations” to bring him back — a ruse that cost the family time and money.
“The family later petitioned the Agbor Area Command on October 14, which led to a painstaking intelligence-led investigation,” Edafe stated.
“Detectives discovered that the last person seen with the victim was the same herbalist.
Surveillance was mounted around his shrine for days until he was eventually arrested on October 23, 2025, while hiding inside a refrigerator.”
Upon interrogation, Amechi confessed that he and his brother had kidnapped Liberty and the Okada rider who conveyed him to the shrine.
He revealed that Liberty had been a regular client, visiting him for charms allegedly used to “hypnotize” people into giving him money.
“The herbalist further confessed that his brother advised him to lure one of his clients so they could kidnap and demand ransom.
“They demanded ₦10 million, and when the ransom failed to come, they killed both victims and dumped their bodies in a soakaway pit beside the shrine,” Edafe disclosed.
PLATFORM TIMES reports that Police operatives later exhumed the corpses and deposited them at a morgue for autopsy.
The suspects remain in custody as investigations continue.
Reacting to the arrest, the Delta State Commissioner of Police, CP Olufemi Abaniwonda, commended the detectives for their diligence and assured residents that the command would ensure that justice is served.
“The Delta State Police Command remains resolute in its commitment to ensuring that no crime goes unpunished.
The full weight of the law will be brought to bear on anyone involved in this heinous act,” the CP vowed.
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