Inside human parts market in Lagos

Inside human parts market in Lagos
By Jossy Idam (jidam14@yahoo.com)
Sunday, February 15, 2009

Jankara market is self- effacing and deceptively ordinary. Located close to Idumagbo area of Lagos Island, the market is just a stretch of an old street.

Ears on the ground
Like other streets and markets, canvassers and touts hang around the place pitching for customers and mugus (gullible people). Though low in reputation,touts are an essential segment of this time – honoured market. Over the years, the place has come to be known as a place where any thing goes. And so, the touts come handy here.
They have their ears on the ground, and therefore know all the goings-on.

Book and wait
A week ago, our reporter posed as a juju priest who was in dire need of human body parts for urgent rituals. After about four hours of waiting and being passed from one “contact” to another, and played around like ping-pong, the reporter got a dealer who “booked” him. The rule here is, if you want a fresh human body part, you book and wait. If your order is for dry parts you get instant delivery.
But you must be an expert in human anatomy to decipher the parts you want from man’s closest animal relations – gorilla, chimpanzee and monkey.

Dark secret
But don’t jump to a hasty conclusion, there are genuine traders and honest businessmen and women at Jankara.They perhaps don’t even know that the place also habour a dark secret. A police post even looks over the place. A signpost calls it Oko Awo Police Post. An office on the counter there stared at our reporter angrily when he asked him if the police know about the wheeling and dealing in human body parts in the area: “What kind of question be this? I beg go, no be for here—o” the police officer retorted angrily.

Menumo
This expression when translated literally means “seal your lips” in Yoruba. The term is said in whisper and hushed tone — menu…mo .When you say the first syllable, you pause, look around to be sure there’s no third party or curiosity cat eaves dropping. When a deal is struck, you will be taken to some dank shanties and courtyard for your consignment.

The business is all about raw cash. A fresh human head has a street value of N250, 000. Fresh internal organs like heart, lung, kidney, and so on go for 500,000 a piece.
Other vital parts like penis, vagina and breast costs N50,000 each.Fresh tongue is sold at N100,000.
Sunday Sun learnt when a tongue is “ritualized and jujufied” that it “works well” for traders and people who apply for visa to go abroad “when well prepared, no one go question you for embassy and even your working place”, a dealer whose alias is Baba Ibeji revealed.
Toe and finger, Sunday Sun further learnt are good for travelers and business people. “ The toe is for traveling without falling.
The finger is to make money. Any thing you touch turns to money”, Baba Ibeji said.
Fresh toe and finger goes for N50,000 each.

Ritual animals
Even animals considered endangered species are not spared in Jankara. Herbalist beside the area’s butcher shop openly sell a wide range of animals. Imprisoned in wire-mesh cages are live animals like eagles, tortoise, chamellion, alligator and so on. A live eagle goes for N10,000.
Dead and dry one costsN500,000. Live Tortois costN5,000 while ordinary empty one is sold for N2,500.
Live chamelion costs N2,500. Dead and dry one goes for N2,000. The lizard-like creature, Sunday Sun learnt, is in demand by Advance Fee Fraudster —419. “When the thing is worked”, it means the more you look, the less you see, you will never caught,” one of the dealers who declined to give his name said.

Tough-skinned
The dealers know their terrain and the world they inhabit.They smell and sense danger in the air all the time. They are inclined to do business with you if you mention and have a prove of a regular Juju priest and customer. Even at this, they will still carry out a check on you. There’s no physical search. Under the pretex of “bringing your thing”, they will call your guarrantor and run a check on you. Any discovery of falsehood, they will cancel the deal and melt out of sight, leaving you to wait forever

Where missing people go
Jankara might be the possible place where missing persons in Lagos resurface but reduced to faceless, liveless body parts. As though to corroborate this, the managing director of Lagos State waste Management Authority (LAWMAN), Mr Ola Oresanya told Sunday Sun in an interview that hardly a day passes in the city without street sweepers and refuse collectors picking dismembered corpses and body parts.

“The corpses and body parts may be the handwork of ritualist and hit-and-run drivers”, he said.
Meanwhile Sunday Sun learnt that the morgues in the city are brimming with unclaimed dcorpses.There’s no more land for mass burial. So cremnation is the only option,” the source said.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2009/feb/15/national-15-02-2009-01.htm