The Police in Kwara State have started investigation to unravel how two children got missing and died inside an uncompleted soak-away pit half filled with water in Gure community, Baruten Local Government Area of Kwara State.
It was gathered that residents of the community were, on Wednesday evening, enraged with anger when they discovered corpses of the two children, a girl and a boy.
The two children were found dead in the pit, at a location, said to be far from the homes of their respective parents, a day after they had been missing.
It was gathered that their discovery in the pit was suspicious to residents of the community as they said that the boy was still crawling, while the girl was only tottering.
Before locating the corpses in the pit, people were said to have combed many places in search of the children whose disappearances happened in separate locations with one said to have taken place at home and the other at the market.
It was also gathered that their parents live in the same community. However, those of one are citizens of the country, those of the other are said to be foreigners.
Gure is one of the communities in the local government that are around the boundary between Nigeria and Benin Republic.
A source in the community informed that residents suspected that the kids children were killed for a ritual purpose though they could not yet finger anyone as the perpetrator.
He said the suspicion of ritual connection was widespread because another boy had earlier, recently, been found in the pit though rescued alive.
The source explained that the people, however, restrained themselves from a violent protest but only called in the police in the town to the situation.
Confirming the incident, the Police Public Relations Officer of the state command, Ajayi Okasanmi, gave the name of the female child as Aisha Micheal and the male as Ibrahim Bernand.
Okasanmi said their remains were recovered from the pit without any mark of violence on the lifeless bodies.
Nigerian Tribune
