The Akwa Ibom State Police Command paraded one Eseme James, a native of Nnung Oku Ibiet community in the state’s Oruk Anam Local Government Area, on Friday for allegedly possessing a human skull.
The suspect was presented by the state’s Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), SP Odiko MacDon, at the third quarter media briefing held at the Command Headquarters, Ikot-Akpanabia, Uyo, with 135 other individuals involved in different offences in the state.
According to the PPRO, the suspect, a woman in her late sixties who is visually challenged, was apprehended by the Nigerian Army on October 12, 2021, at 6:45 p.m., as part of the operation ‘Ex Still Water,’ and turned over to them for discreet investigation.
He stated that the lady is accused of participating in ceremonial activities, adding, “the worry of the police is, what was she doing with a fresh human skull? It means murder has been committed somewhere recently.”
However, the suspect, while interacting with journalists, denied knowledge of the human skull insisting that the police planted the exhibit to implicate her even as her late husband was a herbalist.
She added that the skull was exhumed from a land in dispute near her compound and the police asked her to carry the skull.
Her words, “I don’t know anything about this skull, they came to the house and when I asked this girl (her daughter) what was going on since I cannot see, she told me that police exhumed human skull from the boundary of that disputed land and they gave it to me to bring to the police station, that is why I am here.
“When they came to the house, I was the only person they saw and they said: ‘take let’s go’.
“My husband was a native doctor, I have never seen him do anything with human parts. I don’t know who buried that skull there. The land has been in dispute even before he died.”
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