The 64-year-old man, Joseph Ojo, who allegedly set his five step-children on fire, has confessed to committing the crime, while being paraded at the police headquarters in Ondo State.
The suspect alleged that he carried out the plan because the children always join their mother to beat him anytime there was a misunderstanding. He also alleged that he was starved of food even though he provided money for their upkeep.
Ojo, who denied strangulating his first wife, said he had been married to four women and had 10 children. He said: “I am 64 years old. I have married four wives. I did not strangulate my first wife. I have 10 children from different women. The one I married last, if I give her money to buy food, she does not give me food. She does not wash my clothes. She always fights me. We have been together for two years. She and her children used to fight and beat me. She does not fetch water for me. She always fights me alongside her children. They always beat me.
“We fought the day I set the children on fire. We do not used to quarrel over sex. Everybody in the street knows the children used to beat me. We fought the night I set them on fire.”
MEANWHILE, the biological father of the five children, Liadi Akinfolarin, has demanded justice for the dastardly act of Ojo, which claimed the lives of three of his children.
Akinfolarin said what Ojo did to his children was inhumane, particularly that his twins were not affected. According to him, his wife packed out of their matrimonial house to live with the man that set his children on fire.
“The one that died first is Tayo, a seven-year-old boy and the second one is Aanu, a nine-year-old girl. Their corpses have been deposited at the morgue. The man roasted my children like meat,” he lamented.
Confirming the death of the three children, spokesperson for the state’s Police Command, Olufunmilayo Odunlami, said Ojo had kept his twins in another room before carrying out the act.
She added that Ojo told police interrogators that he gave his wife N600, but he was not given any food the night he carried out the act. Odunlami added that the suspect would soon be charged to court.
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