A 43-year-old man, Yusuf Hassan, has confessed to the police in Ogun State why he decided to set his ex-lover’s apartment on fire to burn her to death.
Hassan said the ex-lover, Busayo Falola, had turned down all efforts to reconcile them, saying he felt the next thing to do was to set her room on fire.
According to the Ogun State police spokesman, Abimbola Oyeyemi, Hassan was arrested on April 4 after burning down the whole building.
The suspect’s arrest, Oyeyemi said, followed a report lodged at Ago Iwoye divisional police headquarters by the owner of the affected building, a 62-year-old woman named Adejoke Salau.
The woman had reported to the police that “she heard a noise from one of her buildings within her compound situated at 127, old Schorlar Palace, Igan road Ago Iwoye, at about 1:15 am, and when she came out she discovered that the building was on fire while the tenants in the house were trapped therein.”
Oyeyemi quoted the woman as stating further that the quick intervention of neighbours assisted in rescuing the three tenants in the building, which she said: “got burnt completely.”
Upon the report, the DPO of Ago Iwoye, CSP Noah Adekanye, was said to have led his men to the scene, where the occupants of the house were invited to the station for interrogation to know the possible cause of the inferno.
During interrogation, Busayo informed the police that she saw her ex-lover, Hassan, at the back of her window at about 12:30 am on the day of the incident.
She explained that she was scared to see Hassan at such an ‘ungodly hour’, saying she screamed and ran out of her room to another tenant.
It was said that other tenants also went out to see what the man was up to, but they only discovered flame coming out from Busayo’s room.
Acting on the information, Hassan was arrested, but he denied knowledge of the incident.
However, when the DPO ordered detectives to visit his house and find out whether or not he was at home at the time of the incident, “he opened up and confessed being the person who set the house ablaze,” said Oyeyemi.
The police spokesman said the man “confessed further that he intended to burn his ex-lover in her own apartment because he had tried his possible best to reconcile with her but to no avail.”
He had told the police that he bought N500 petrol, poured it into Busayo’s room through the window and set it afire.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police in Ogun has directed the suspect’s transfer to the State CIID for further investigation and possible prosecution.
