Catching The Kito: The Network That Led To The Capture of Anti-Gay Criminals

The reports started circulating on Friday (March 15) and Saturday (March 16) through WhatsApp groups and amongst community members, of someone who’d just been set up. The circulation of these reports is part of our existence as gay Nigerians: every other week, someone is getting kitoed, and if he is brave enough to share with his friends his trauma, then in the interest of protecting others from falling into the same trap, everyone starts sharing screenshots and photos and personal information of the kito perpetrator. For 10 years since the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act was signed into law, “exposing the kito scum” has more or less been the most we can do to get back at those who attack our humanity.

But this time, during this weekend, something about this particular case felt different. Perhaps it was the incredulous amount of 30 million naira that was reported to have been taken from the victim. Perhaps it was the realization that the set-up happened in Lekki, making what used to be a relative safe place for the gays to exist become a kito red zone. Whatever was the case, the hysteria surrounding the circulation of this report should have been an indication to anyone paying attention that this time, there was going to be a reckoning.

That reckoning came in the form of a community member, who we will address as X. like the rest of the gay community in Lagos, X was informed of what happened around midnight on Friday. Unlike the rest of us, he knew the victim personally. And by the time he got up on Saturday morning, he had made the decision to hunt down the criminal that victimized his friend.

This criminal goes by the name Victor aka bobfreshy, supposedly resides either in Egbeda or Lekki, and serves as yet another new face for the operation run by the likes of Edet Akamo Okon aka John Bassey.

We talked to X, and the following is a narration of how he doggedly employed every resource available to him to apprehend these criminals.

X initially offered himself up as bait, chatting up Victor on WhatsApp (number gotten from the victim) with the story that they matched on Tinder a while ago, and he’d like for them to meet up. Victor seemed to buy the story, and after establishing that X was also in Lekki, fixed a rendezvous for 1 PM that Saturday afternoon.

When X chatted him up by 1, Victor told him he was with some friends and wouldn’t be available until 7 PM. X acquiesced. By this time, he had already paid for some muscle in the form of some uniformed men.

However, when he chatted Victor up by 7, it seemed the kito scum had gotten skittish, maybe realizing that the vagueness of X’s story was too insincere. (After all, it takes a liar to know one). He told X that he was no longer interested in seeing him and subsequently blocked him on WhatsApp.

Undeterred, X began circulating Victor’s pictures and personal information through friends to friends of friends to the gay community at large, urging anyone who finds themself chatting with him to agree for a meetup and then let him know. If he wasn’t going to be bait, someone else might as well be.

On Sunday morning, someone gave feedback that they were chatting with Victor and had scheduled a hookup in Egbeda. According to the feedback, Victor was already on his way to see the person at his house. X quickly got together some of his friends and the uniformed men, and they headed off to the mainland. However, by the time they got to Egbeda, Victor had apparently excused himself after getting to the house, saying he wanted to run a quick errand. Believing that he would come back, X and his guys decided to wait.

The wait lasted about two hours, before X was notified by someone in Lekki, saying that he was chatting with Victor, and had been asked to meet him at the Mega Chicken eatery in Lekki. (It would seem that Victor had skipped on his planned hookup to join his fellow kito scum for another job).

So X and his crew had to make the trip back to Lekki, straight to Mega Chicken at Elf Bus stop, the plan apparently to wait until the bait gets there and connects with Victor before pouncing.

As they waited, X’s friend (the victim) recognized two guys – who were part of the group that set him up – enter Mega Chicken to buy some food. They held back from following them, preferring instead to stick with the original plan of entrapping Victor.

It was a long wait; the bait got to the junction by 8 PM, and began texting and calling Victor. For whatever reason, it seemed the gang was no longer interested in him, because Victor didn’t respond. It was looking like another bust, when X got word that another guy from Lekki Phase 1 had been chatting with Victor and had been invited to the same location. (It would seem that the gang had decided to forego the first guy and settle for the one coming from Phase 1).

X switched gears, calling the new bait and informing him of their operation. And he agreed to play along.

However, they spotted one of those guys from earlier on; he’d come back to buy more food. This caused a swift change of plans; instead of waiting for the bait, the decided to follow the kito scum. They followed him to the service apartment that the gang rented for their operation, which was just a couple of blocks away from Mega Chicken. They pounced on him once they realized he’d gotten to his destination and proceeded to thoroughly beat him up when he tried to fight back. At some point during the kerfuffle, Victor emerged through the gate, and the grabbed him too. They beat him, until he confessed that there were 6 other guys upstairs in the apartment they rented.

The two of them were handcuffed and everyone went upstairs to the third floor, where they let themselves into the apartment. They immediately encountered one of them, who promptly got roughed up. When asked about the others, he lied that there was no other person around. So they searched the apartment, finding two people hiding under the bed in one room, another one hiding under the bed in the second room, one more hiding in the balcony, and the sixth hiding behind the fridge.

By this time, the number of angry people eager to punch and kick and lash out at the criminals had burgeoned, as other occupants of the building and roadside touts joined the melee. To everyone, the story was simple: these guys were criminals who kidnap young men and extort money from them in exchange for their freedom.

Through the beatings and interrogation, they confessed to extortions of large sums of money, ranging from as much as 30 million naira to as little as a million or half a million naira. They confessed to seizing phones from their victims and roughing them up before discarding them, some without even any transport fare to go back home.

At some point during the ruckus, a policeman attached with the service apartment had called his boss to report what was going on. His boss in turn called the police commissioner, and in a short while, 3 police Hilux vehicles had arrived at the scene and taken over the case, transporting the criminals to the Lagos State Police Command.

The case is still developing, and we hope these men are prosecuted with as much zeal as the police like to prosecute the gays. As it develops, we will update you.