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Oyo State Police have launched a manhunt for a 29-year-old man suspected of killing his girlfriend, Precious Mogaji, after her body was discovered at the entrance of his room in Ibadan’s Ojoo district in the early hours of Monday, March 9, 2026. The suspect, Quadri Mohammed, had fled the scene before officers arrived and remains at large.
The body of Mogaji, 26, was found at approximately 12:05 a.m. by a member of the public who alerted the nearest station after discovering her lying motionless at the doorway of Mohammed’s apartment in the Oguntula area of Ojoo, located within the Akinyele Local Government Area of Oyo State. A patrol team and the incident duty officer from the Ojoo Division were dispatched immediately following the distress call and confirmed her death on arrival.
“The Oyo State Police Command has commenced an investigation into the alleged murder of a victim, one Precious Mogaji, female, aged 26 years,” command spokesperson Olayinka Ayanlade said in a statement issued the same day.
Officers conducted a preliminary forensic examination at the scene before photographing and documenting the immediate area in line with standard investigative procedures. Mogaji’s remains were subsequently transported to a hospital morgue, where they await an autopsy to formally establish the cause of death. No cause of death has been publicly confirmed at this stage.
The Oyo State command also moved to correct misinformation that had spread rapidly across social media and been picked up by several media outlets in the hours following the incident. Early reports circulating online had placed the incident in the Akobo area of Ibadan and alleged that a man had attempted to conceal a woman’s body in the trunk of a vehicle. Police said both details were inaccurate. “Contrary to the false narrative circulating in some sections of the media alleging that the incident occurred in Akobo and involved a husband attempting to place the corpse of his wife in the trunk of a car, preliminary findings indicate that the incident actually occurred in the Oguntula area of Ojoo, Ibadan,” Ayanlade’s statement read. The command cautioned that inaccurate reports risked obstructing the investigation and generating unnecessary public anxiety.
Mohammed’s whereabouts remain unknown. Ayanlade confirmed that efforts to locate him were ongoing and described investigators as pursuing multiple leads. He has not been formally charged and is at this stage being sought for questioning in connection with the circumstances surrounding Mogaji’s death. Police have appealed to members of the public with relevant information to contact the Ojoo Division or any Oyo State police station directly.
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The case has drawn renewed attention to Nigeria’s persistent crisis of intimate partner violence, which advocacy groups and legal scholars say continues to be inadequately addressed through existing legislation. Research compiled by DocumentWomen places Nigeria fifth among the ten countries globally with the highest femicide rates, while the DOHS Cares Foundation verified 133 suspected cases of gender-related killings in the country in 2024 alone — a figure its founder believes may be three times higher due to severe underreporting. Academic research estimates that between 300 and 350 women are killed annually in Nigeria by husbands, former partners, boyfriends, or male relatives.
Nigeria’s existing legal architecture, including the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015 and various state-level Administration of Criminal Justice Laws, contains no specific provision that defines or criminalises femicide as a distinct offence, a gap that gender rights organisations have argued contributes to chronic under-prosecution. The VAPP Act has been domesticated by a number of states but enforcement has been inconsistent, and police responses to intimate partner violence complaints have been widely criticised as inadequate. The DOHS Cares Foundation submitted a legislative bill to both the Lagos State House of Assembly and the National House of Assembly in April 2024, calling for the formal criminalisation of femicide, though it has not been passed into law as of the time of writing.
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The regional picture is equally stark. Africa recorded an estimated 22,600 victims of intimate partner and family member femicide in 2024, the highest total of any region globally and the highest rate relative to female population, at three victims per 100,000 women and girls, according to data published jointly by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women.
The Precious Mogaji case has attracted significant public attention online, with Nigerian social media users calling for accountability and drawing comparisons to previous high-profile killings of women by intimate partners in the country. The Oyo State Police Command said it would provide updates as investigations progressed and reiterated its assurance that any person found culpable would face prosecution. No charges have yet been filed.
The next procedural step is the completion of the forensic autopsy, the results of which will inform the specific charges sought by prosecutors once Mohammed is apprehended. No date for the conclusion of the post-mortem examination has been publicly disclosed.
