The Chief State Attorney prosecuting the case involving the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the four Takoradi missing girls revealed at a Sekondi High Court yesterday that a quarrel once ensued between the two Nigerian suspects arrested in the case.
In the course of the quarrel, the second accused person, John Oji, was shouting on top of his voice and the first accused, Samuel Udoetuk Wills, told his compatriot to shut up because he (Mr. Wills) has killed someone in the room.
According to the Chief State Attorney, Patience Klinogo, this was contained in a statement that the second accused person, Mr. Oji, gave to the police as part of the investigations into the case.
The Chief Stare Attorney, while cross examining the second accused person who had opened his defence asked, “When you visited the first accused in December 2018, a quarrel ensued between the two of you and you started shouting but the first accused person asked you not to make noise and be shouting because he had killed someone. That is in your statement and you signed?”
Mr. Oji answered that “this is my statement but not my sentence.”
The Chief State Attorney stated that in the same statement which was an exhibit before the court, second accused had said “I know that the kidnapped girls are three and Sammy knows their whereabouts.”
She then said “I am putting it to you that you gave that information voluntarily to the police,” but Mr. Oji retorted “I disagree to that (sic).”
He explained that after he was arrested he was asked how many girls were missing and he said he was told they were three, adding “I never added that Mr. Wills knew their whereabouts.”
The prosecutor asked Mr. Oji again, “Do you trust the first accused person?” and the witness answered, “No!”
The prosecutor followed up with another question, “So why did you visit him?” and Mr. Oji said that Mr. Wills is his childhood friend and that he visited him in Ghana because Mr. Wills promised to get him a job in Ghana.
He said Mr. Wills told him he was working with a construction company in Ghana and promised to get him a job as a public relations officer.
The Chief State Attorney pointed out to him that he visited Mr. Wills in Takoradi and was later sent to Tamale – all to pursue their kidnapping agenda, but Mr. Oji disagreed with the prosecutor.
Led in evidence by his counsel from the Ghana Legal Aid, Mark Bosia, the second accused earlier indicated that he was arrested at the border between Togo and Ghana on June 4, 2019 and that he was lured by some security personnel to travel from Nigeria to the Togo border.
He said he immediately did not know why he was arrested but he was later told that he had been arrested for kidnapping.
Mr. Wills and Mr. Oji are being tried in connection with the missing girls which has generated heated public debate for about two years.
The victims—Ruth Love Quayson, Priscilla Blessing Bentum, Priscilla Mantebea Koranchie and Ruth Abekah—were believed to have been kidnapped between August 2018 and January 2019, and the police subsequently said some skeletal remains they found in Takoradi were that of the girls.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Sekondi