Joseph Ojo a 64 old man who is accused of setting his five stepchildren on fire has confessed to the act while being led through the Ondo State police department’s headquarters.
Ojo said he burnt them because whenever there was a disagreement, the kids would invariably join their mother in beating him. In spite of the fact that he paid for their maintenance, he also claimed that he went without meals.
According to him: “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 and she buys 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. They are always fighting. She does not fetch water for me. She fights the whole street. She always fight me alongside her children. They always beat me.
“We fought the day I set the children ablaze. We do not use to quarrel over sex. Everybody in the street knows the children used to beat me. We fought the night I set them ablaze.”
Meanwhile, Liadi Akinfolarin, the biological father of the five kids, has called for justice for Ojo’s heinous deed, which took the lives of three of his kids.
Given that his own twins were unaffected, Akinfolarin argued that Ojo’s treatment of his children was inhumane. He claimed that his wife left their marital home and moved in with the man who had lit 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.
Olufunmilayo Odunlami, a spokesperson for the state’s Police Command, confirmed the deaths of the three kids and claimed that Ojo had kept his twins in a different room before committing the crime.
