Suspected Ritualist scares Wuse residents

The presence of a man, who has lived for years by the roadside near Wuse Market in Abuja, is raising concern among residents.
Some of the residents said they believed that the  man may not be of unsound mind.

They said that they were afraid of the man because he lived in the same spot for more than seven years and had no visible source of income. 
The City News observed that the man used heap of polythene bags as his bed and hanged five sacks containing his plates and clothes

On damaged road railings. 

  
An official of the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), who pleaded anonymity, alleged that the man lived an extravagant life style and often seen spending new naira notes. The official claimed that the man sometimes used six tins of evaporated milk for his tea during breakfast.

 
She added that it was said that a woman used to pick him at night and return him in the morning. Sometime, last year, AEPB officials on night duty followed and tried to arrest the mysterious woman but they could not as she disappeared in Wuse II.
 “Our officials have arrested him and taken him away from the spot so many times but whenever he is released, he will find his way back here,” the source said. “Nobody knows how he is making his money and he’s not violent. The money he has even people that are working do not have it.”  

Anayo Okocha, a newspaper vendor in the area, said that the man is not mad, adding: “He has serious challenge. He doesn’t see but he can talk very well.” 

 
He said he has been seeing the man since 2002. 
“His presence has been generating concern,” he added. “Before now, he used to pour water and defecate indiscriminately but he was cautioned.” 

 
Speaking, albeit incoherently sometimes, the man who gave his name as “God”, said that his family members were in “the kingdom after heaven,” adding that he was not mad as people thought. 
He said: “I have been living at this particular spot since January 2011. I came to do something and I am not done with it yet.”  
He said that he was arrested by the AEPB officials for more than 30 times, but only once in 2016, denying engaging in ritual activities. 
“I am not a ritualist,” he said. “It is the ritualist that used to attack me here and they have not succeeded, despite my warnings to them to stop.”

 
Asked what he used to do at night, he said: “At night, I only lay down, I don’t do anything.”  

On his source of income, he said that he begged for alms in long capacity buses  plying Nyanya-Mararaba route.