…Use Job Vacancies As Bait
By Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi
The unquenchable quest and voracious hunger for quick wealth and better life may have driven some Nigerians into certain forms of criminalities.
TPCN investigations reveal that ritual killing and human organ harvesting business is currently booming in Nigeria in particular and Africa at large as many jobless people are now engaging in it.
According to investigations, these killers use job opportunity adverts to lure their unsuspecting victims who believe that they will find jobs for them either in Nigeria or abroad. Such adverts are printed as fliers or posters and placed at strategic areas in the city, such as junctions, walls, electric poles and flyovers
One curious thing about these adverts, TPCN gathered, is that they do not carry the addresses of the agencies or companies offering the jobs. Only telephone numbers are printed on them.
In Port Harcourt, these job vacancy adverts are everywhere. They can be seen on almost all the electric poles and walls. Some of them enumerate the amount of money the job seekers will earn when they are employed. Some even go as far as listing the various grades of salaries based on the number of hours an employee works.
According to one young man who hails from Abua Local Government Area of Rivers State, the reason for this is to avoid exposing the hideout of those behind the business and shield them from security surveillance.
The young man, who pleaded for anonymity, said he almost fell victim to the ritualists and organ harvesters when he went to look for job.
He said: “I once called one of the numbers on one vacancy advert like that and the person who spoke with me told me to come to one place at Trans-Amadi. When I got there, the person at the gate ushered me into the office and I saw many other people who came to look for job too. We stayed from morning to evening and they took our names. That day, they told us to go and come back the next day.
“When I came the next day, we stayed till afternoon. In that office, I noticed that from time to time they will call three or four applicants into another office and we will not see them again. They will just tell us that they have been taken to the company where they will be given jobs. So I began to have suspicion.
“My mind was telling me that those people are not sincere and that I should go. So I summoned courage and stood up, left the room and headed towards the gate. One of the men shouted at me and asked me where I was going. I told him I was going to ease myself and he said that I should do fast and come back. But I did not come back. I left from there.”
TPCN learnt from another source that these killers sometimes have their hideouts in other states but come to Port Harcourt to get unsuspecting job seekers, perhaps because of the teeming population in the city.
When the job seekers call them they will direct them to come to the state and sometimes they will provide means of transport for them.
A source, who said her friend’s sister nearly fell victim to the ritual killers but escaped miraculously. She lamented that many young people are falling victim to this growing evil.
She narrated: “My friend, who lives with her junior sister here in Port Harcourt said her sister saw one of these job vacancies and called the number there and they told her that they will come to Anambra. They later brought a bus that carried them and headed towards Owerri. But on the way, the bus entered a bush track and drove them into a forest where they killed all the people inside the bus and took their important body parts, except this my friend’s sister. God saved her miraculously. They beat her, macheted her but she did not die, so they got tied and dumped her along the road. By that time her people had started looking for her. They went to a spiritualist who told them that she is alive. She was later seen her along the road and where strangers picked her up. That’s how she survived that death.”
When TPCN asked her to take them to the house of her friend and her sister to interview them, she declined, citing security reasons.
She, however, appealed to security agencies to begin a clamp down on the ritual killers and human organ harvesters by using those telephone numbers on their job vacancy adverts to trace them.
“Please, I just want to beg security agents to try more to expose and arrest these ritual killers who sell body parts to make a living. They can catch them by calling those numbers on the job vacancy posters. This evil has to stop,” she said.
TPCN investigations further revealed that the most rampant strategy these organ harvesters now use is Overseas job vacancies. They prepare all the travel papers for their victims and once they take them out of the country, they harvest their vital internal organs while they are still alive and sell them to agents who sell them to the hospitals that need them for transplant operations.
TPCN learnt that they sell liver, kidneys and heart between one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) and two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000) each and they are in hot demand in countries like Malaysia, India, Philippines, among others.
TPCN investigations on this currently booming evil trade is still ongoing as updates will be reported from time to time.
