CLAIM: Teenager Kills 4-Year-Old Boy Over N50,000 In Lagos

Yunusa Umar

An image showing a teenager carrying the corpse of a beheaded 4-year-old boy in Lagos State, Nigeria was posted by an X account, @MadukaOgwueleka on September, 16, 2024. 

The poster claimed that the image depicted a breaking story of a ritual killing from “Yourbaland” that morning. 

“ANOTHER BREAKING RITUAL KILLING NEWS FROM YORUBALAND THIS MORNING, 16th September 2024”.

“A 16-year-old teenager, identified as Azeez Tajudeen, in the Ijanikin area of Lagos, lured his 4-year-old neighbour, Ibrahim to a primary school and killed him for just N50K (about 22 pounds).”

“Azeez Tajudeen was said to have stabbed and strangled the victim. He also removed his intestines, kidney and cut off of his manhood. According to Azeez, a man named Osho had approached him and asked him to get him fresh human parts and that he would be paid N50,000 in return.

“Yorubanivorous, Yorubastards keeling Yorubas without remorse 🫢Be very careful with any Afonja (even if he is 10 years old)”.

The post which has since been deleted by X for violating community rules received significant engagement including over 216 reposts before it was removed by the platform.

One of the comments under the now deleted posts pointed out that the incident may not be recent while other comments raised concerns about ethnic hostilities against the ‘Yoruba’ tribe. @Rotleo3819 commented that, “This happened years ago..Stop sharing misinformation with confidence.Haba. When we see bad things let condemn it but not misinformation.”

Another X user, @NDon4life commented with, “If Awolowo had invested the money he used to train Yoruba PONU betrayers in education into shoe shining business,  it would have yielded better results”. Then, X user, @HowellRobson commented saying,”Yorubas are living a life with a curse from their ancestors, sabotaging, Hypocrite, lying, and tribe bigotry.” 

VERIFICATION 

NV-A extracted screenshots of the images and subjected the pictures to Reverse Image search. The results show that the images are old and the news coverage found on it showed that the incident happened in 2015.

A keyword search led our fact-checker to a report published by Daily Trust on July 27, 2015.

“A 16-year-old boy, Tajudeen Azeez, was Monday arrested by policemen from Ijanikin Police Station in Lagos after he allegedly killed a four-year-old boy earlier in the day. He is presently being detained at the homicide section of the State Criminal Investigations Department (SCID), Yaba”, the news report read.

Information News corroborated that the incident happened in 2015. According to a news report published on their website on July 28, 2015, Tajudeen Azeez, was arrested by the Lagos state police command for allegedly killing a four-year-old boy in Ijaniki area of the state.

“The suspect, who was said to have lured his victim to the back of a primary school on Monday morning, killed him there and removed his intestine and kidneys”, the news report stated.

Another media outlet, NewSpeakOnline also reported on July 30, 2015 that nine more suspects were arrested in connection to the murder of the four-year-old in Lagos.

CONCLUSION

The claim that a Teenager killed a 4-Year-Old Boy Over N50,000 in Lagos and has been arrested is TRUE, however the incident is not recent it occurred in July 2015.

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