A 23-year-old philosophy student from Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ayomide Adeleye, has admitted to killing 18-year-old Christiana Idowu, a church member, due to financial difficulties. In a chilling confession reported by Vanguard on Sunday, Adeleye, now in custody at the Lagos State Police Command Tactical Unit in Ikeja, described how he lured the victim to his home under the guise of repairing her phone.
“I killed her because I had financial problems,” Adeleye revealed, recounting how Idowu, an Industrial Training student at Yaba College of Technology, visited his residence. “She came to our house around 5 pm on the day of the incident and asked me to repair her phone.”
Adeleye detailed the moment he took her life, stating, “I just grabbed her, applied pressure. She started struggling… I then squeezed her throat, and she gave up.”
After the murder, Adeleye devised a plan to bury the body and extort money from the victim’s grieving mother. He dug a shallow grave behind his compound and buried Idowu in the early hours of the following day. “By 4 am, I woke up, I continued digging. Honestly, I did not close my eyes till daybreak,” he said.
Adeleye then called Idowu’s mother, demanding a ransom. “The first thing I said to her was, ‘Hello, madam, we have your daughter,’” he recounted. He initially demanded N3 million but eventually accepted N360,000 after realizing the mother couldn’t raise the full amount.
The police traced Adeleye through his SportyBet account, where he had uploaded his National Identification Number (NIN), leading to his arrest. “The moment I uploaded my NIN, all my personal details, my location, my address, my name, everything, was already on the SportyBet,” he explained.
Expressing regret for his actions, Adeleye said, “I don’t deserve any mercy for what I have done. At the same time, I ask God to forgive me. What I did was totally wrong, and I regret it.”
Adeleye also disclosed that he had contemplated suicide following the crime, stating, “I have been planning to kill myself… I tried to look for any sharp object to cut myself so that I would bleed to death.”
