On Wednesday, October 22, 2025, at almost 11pm, as some residents of Asuni area along Isale Osi Road in Ibadan, Oyo State, laid their heads to sleep, Madam Fatima Ahmed, a septuagenarian who owns a big shop selling different items, was engaged in late-hour sales to those in urgent need of food items.
Suddenly, a customer, later identified as Wasiu Egbetunde, came to the front of the shop to purchase sachet water. However, Wasiu turned his request into ruin for the shop owner as he allegedly ended up inside the shop where he hid and started destroying items of yet-to-be-ascertained value when he went on a rampage over an issue that is still a mystery. The rage was allegedly the outcome of the illicit drug called Loud (a strain of cannabis) which Wasiu took shortly before coming for the purchase.
During the rage, which lasted from 11pm to almost 4am the following day, Wasiu reportedly grabbed cartons of malt and soft drinks with their contents still in them and broke the corked bottles by throwing them at people through a burglar-proof door dividing the shop. His act was said to have caused injuries to about eight men who came to halt his rampage.
Saturday Tribune learnt that Wasiu did not stop there. He also attacked and injured operatives of the Amotekun Corps with the bottles he hurled at them as they tried to calm him down and asked him to come out of the shop from where he was throwing the missiles.
The Amotekun operatives, led by Mr. Sikiru Apanpa, who is the second-in-command to the Ibadan South West Local Government Area Coordinator, said that it took them hours to subdue the suspect. Mr. Apanpa disclosed that he was among those injured by the bottles being thrown by Wasiu. But the drug addict was eventually subdued with a gunshot in his hand, which immobilised him. Quietly after that, he was said to have walked out of the shop and surrendered himself.
Speaking with Saturday Tribune on how the incident started, Madam Ahmed, who also lives in the neighbourhood, said that Wasiu came to buy N100 worth of sachet water but was nowhere to be found when the sachets were brought to him.
“Not long after, he returned, and the sachet water was given to him. He sat on one of the benches outside my shop and started eating rice from a bowl he came with. Suddenly, he started shouting, ‘They want to kill me! They want to kill me!’ As a bike rider stopped to make purchases, the suspect suddenly sprang up and tightly wrapped himself around me. I struggled to loosen his arms, but he wound his two legs round me. People were telling him: ‘You will kill this elderly woman.’
“Suddenly, he picked me up and threw me against the shop doorway. The next thing was for him to enter my spacious shop. He started breaking bottles of malt and soft drinks he saw in their cartons, also throwing the bottles through the burglar-proof slide at the middle of my shop, hitting those trying to tell him to leave. Their bodies turned bloody with the impact of the pointed ends of the broken bottles. One of the people had part of his ear sliced off. Another was injured on the leg.
“It was one young boy who ran to a filling station nearby to tell them what was happening. The people called Amotekun, and the officers came and persuaded him to come out. However, he went on to throw bottles at them, injuring them too,” Madam Ahmed narrated.
She claimed that the goods destroyed in the shop were worth more than N3 million while the N250,000 cash she tied at the edge of her wrapper also disappeared during the melee. It was learnt that those injured were taken to a private hospital for medical treatment.
However, Wasiu, who defended his actions, said that he ran into the shop to protect himself from being killed by some boys in the area.
Wasiu told his side of the story: “The tricycle I bought on hire purchase had a fault, so I had no means of livelihood. That night, I went to my mother to get dinner for me and my wife. On my way home, I stopped by at Asuni area, where a friend was selling hard drugs, in order to get money from him. He gave me two doses of Loud to smoke.
“I started feeling uncomfortable as I was going home. I believed it was because I took the hard drug without food in my stomach. I first sat in a drainage and asked for sachet water to cool my brain. Later, I stood up to go home but remembered that I had no water to drink at home. I stopped at Mama’s shop and paid N100 for sachet water to take home but did not wait to collect it. I forgot. Unfortunately, I met some boys who demanded phone and money from me. They collected my phone and the N500 given to me by my friend at the hemp joint. The boys also collected the bar soap my mother gave me to wash our dirty clothes.
“I was just trying to get home due to the effect of the hard drug I took. Initially, I was becoming calm and controlling myself, but the boys did not listen to me. They tried to pin me down, and that escalated my condition. I remembered my sachet water at Mama’s shop and went back to get it, but the boys followed me. They demanded for the food my mother gave me, and I resisted them. I sat on Mama’s bench and ate it.
“The boys told me to go home, but I said I was not leaving. They started beating me, and I quickly held on to Mama for protection, but the boys kept pulling me away from her. They started using cutlass on me. They had a small keg of petrol and matches. They intended to set me ablaze.
“I eventually succeeded in extricating myself from the boys and ran inside Mama’s shop. More boys living in the area came out and started throwing stones and other objects at me.”
He said that he didn’t just start breaking bottles filled with drinks but was countering the attacks on him. He added that he was angry that the shop owner did not render any help by sending the boys away.
“It was the boys who attacked me where I was and wounded me,” Wasiu said.
He disclosed that he ran into the big shop because he had no other means of escaping from his pursuers. He also said he aimed bottles at Amotekun operatives, thinking they were lying about their identity. “I was just saving my life,” the drug addict admitted.
He disclosed to Saturday Tribune that he started smoking at 10 years old while still in primary school, starting with cigarettes before graduating to taking Loud. “But it had an adverse effect on me that day,” Wasiu confessed.
The suspect’s mother, Mrs. Jemila Egbetunde, who also spoke with Saturday Tribune, said that when Wasiu came to her after 10pm that fateful night to ask for food for himself and his wife, she cooked rice and gave him. “He also asked for bar soap to wash his family’s dirty clothes, and I gave him the one I bought for N300, unknown to me that he would still brew trouble,” the mother said.
When asked whether she knew about her son taking illicit drugs, Mrs. Egbetunde replied: “Wasiu has been on hard drugs for a long time. I have shouted and shouted over it. I have reprimanded and counselled him, but he refused to listen. He was sent to school but stopped at Primary Four. I persuaded him to continue his education, but he did not yield. He was even made to sign a document to indicate that he was the one who decided to stop schooling.”
Speaking on how she heard about her son’s misdemeanour, the mother said: “It was his wife, along with her neighbours, who rushed to my place at about 6am on Thursday and told me what happened. I followed her to the scene of the incident and saw with my own eyes all the things my son destroyed.
“What he did was very wrong, and I cannot be on his side. All I’m appealing for is leniency from the shop owner.”