In a chilling confession, a 23-year-old philosophy student at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ayomide Adeleye, has revealed how he murdered an 18-year-old church member, Christiana Idowu, due to financial struggles.
Adeleye, who is now in custody at the Lagos State Police Command Tactical Unit in Ikeja, admitted to luring the victim to his home under the guise of repairing her phone, before taking her life in a brutal act of desperation.
“I killed her because I had financial problems,” Adeleye confessed to police investigators, recounting how the tragic incident unfolded when Idowu, an Industrial Training student at Yaba College of Technology, visited his home.
The victim, who had trusted Adeleye with the simple task of fixing her phone, met her untimely death when he grabbed and strangled her in his room.
“She came to our house around 5 p.m. on the day of the incident and asked me to repair her phone,” Adeleye recounted.
“I just grabbed her, applied pressure. She started struggling. She didn’t really shout because I already suppressed her. I then squeezed her throat, and she gave up.”
After the murder, Adeleye devised a sinister plan to dispose of Idowu’s body and extort money from her mother. He dug a shallow grave behind his compound and buried the young woman’s body in the early hours of the morning.
“By 4 a.m. the following day, I woke up, I continued digging. Honestly, I did not close my eyes till daybreak,” he said.
In a horrifying twist, Adeleye then contacted Idowu’s mother, pretending to be her daughter’s kidnapper and demanding a ransom of N3 million. Knowing that the grieving mother couldn’t raise such a large sum, Adeleye eventually accepted N360,000.
He had the money deposited into a SportyBet account, hoping to evade detection.
“I know for a fact that she didn’t have N3 million. Even if she did not have that amount, I was ready to collect any amount because I desperately needed money,” he explained.
“After going back and forth with her, she said she was able to get N350,000, and I gave her a SportyBet account to pay the money in order to avoid being traced.”
However, Adeleye’s plan unraveled when the authorities tracked his SportyBet account. In his attempt to withdraw the ransom, he had uploaded his National Identification Number (NIN) to the account, unknowingly providing the police with all his personal information.
“If I had not uploaded my NIN, it would just be an empty account,” Adeleye admitted, explaining how this crucial mistake led to his arrest.
“But the moment I uploaded my NIN, all my personal details—my location, my address, my name—everything was already on SportyBet. The girl’s phone was also with me, they could have traced the location of the phone, that was how they got my location.”
Expressing regret, Adeleye acknowledged the gravity of his actions. “I regret that I killed her because my mum and her mum were friends,” he said.
“I don’t deserve any mercy for what I have done. At the same time, I ask God to forgive me. What I did was totally wrong, and I regret it.”
Haunted by his actions, Adeleye revealed that he had even contemplated suicide. “I feel remorseful for what I have done. If there’s any way I could be given a second chance, I want to be given one but I deserve death, honestly,” he said.
“While I was in the guard room, I tried to look for any sharp object to cut myself so that I would bleed to death.”
Adeleye now faces charges for murder and extortion, as the Lagos State Police continue to investigate the full extent of his crimes.
