Traditional Priest Kills Trader

A fetish priest, Agbeko Acumalt has been accused of killing a second-hand clothing trader of the Kantamanto Market in the Accra. The deceased is reported to have visited the suspect’s shrine to double her money. The Chronicle newspaper reports that the priest killed the trader after she threatened to report him to the police for failure to double an amount of GHc15,000 she had given to him.

On May 15, the prosecutor, Chief Inspector Margaret Ofori Boadi told the Achimota District Court in Accra that in November 2022, the deceased lost her goods to a fire outbreak at Kantamanto Market leaving her in financial difficulties. In a bid to make save her business from collapse, in March 2023 the late trader visited the priest’s shrine at Lente-Wuti to perform the so-called money doubling rituals for her to revive her business.

The priest is reported to have introduced the used clothing dealer to his assistant, Selassie who presented a list of items required to perform the rituals. Weeks after the rituals, her money had still not doubled. Out of frustration, she threatened to take legal action against the priest and the said Selassie. For fear of being arrested, the fetish priest and his accomplice hatched a plan to kill her.

On March 26, the fetish priest invited the deceased to her shrine, and asked her not to inform anyone about the journey. Upon arrival at the shrine after traveling all the way from Kasoa-Kuwait in the Central Region to Lente-Wuti in the Volta Region, the two men strangled her to death.

On April 3, a relative of the deceased, Emmanuel Ofori Boadi filed a complaint about a missing person which led to an investigation and the subsequent arrest of the priest on April 5. Again, police upon further investigation located the grave where the trader was buried on April 19. Her decomposed body was subsequently exhumed on April 23, 2023, and deposited at the morgue. The accused persons have since been charged and put before court.