On the evening of Sunday, September 21, 2025, at about 6:30, a 55-year-old night watchman named Issah Yahaya was found dead inside a motor mechanic's shop at Dobile, close to the New Market in Wa, the capital of Ghana's Upper West Region. Police who examined the scene found a broken piece of cement block mixed with blood, a knife placed on his face, and a second, bloodstained cement block behind the shop. A post-mortem at the Upper West Regional Hospital gave the cause of death as "severe head injury due to blunt force head trauma." The police commander for the region later said the injuries were similar to those in killings that had been recorded in Wa in earlier years.
Fifteen days later, police arrested a cobbler named Shariff Abdulai. He was carrying Issah Yahaya's mobile phone and his solar-powered radio. Within two days, according to the police, he had told investigators that he had killed 15 people in Wa since 2021 and seven more in towns to the south. Five months after that he stood in the High Court in Wa, pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor. The police statement on the sentence put the total at 23.
For four years before his arrest, people in Wa had lived with a run of killings of night watchmen that the police could not solve. Abdulai's plea answered some of the questions those killings raised. It did not answer all of them, and the public record of what he was convicted of is thin. This account separates what a court decided, what Abdulai admitted to the police and in court, and what remains suspicion.
Very little has been published about Shariff Abdulai's life before his arrest. The police described him in October 2025 as a cobbler and an ex-convict, aged 30. They did not say what his earlier conviction was for. Citi Newsroom, reporting the police account, gave his other names as Saani, Mohammed and "Critos." By the time of his sentencing, the name had settled in the press as "Cristos," and Graphic Online gave his age as 44. No source opened explains the gap between the two ages, where he was born, or how long he had lived in Wa.
What the police did describe was where he lived when they found him. After his arrest they searched what they called his hideout, a metal container in the bush near the Wa airstrip. Spellings of his name vary from report to report: Sherif, Sheriff, Sharif, Sherrif and Shariff. The court-era reporting and the police statement on his sentence use Shariff, and so does this page.
Schools, shops, offices and homes in Wa employ private night watchmen, who spend the night alone at their posts. Several of the watchmen killed in the years before Abdulai's arrest were in their fifties and sixties.
According to the police briefing given after Abdulai's arrest, the Upper West Region recorded 15 murder cases between 2021 and 2022 that involved mainly night watchmen found dead at their posts, strangled or struck on the head with blocks. The police listed where they happened. In 2021 there were four: at Kpaguri, at Loho, at Kambale-Mangu and between Kaleo and Loho. In 2022 there were eleven more "with similar modus": on the Kulpong-Yeyiri road, near the High Ranking School on the Napogbakole extension, at Goripie near Bulenga, at the TI Ahmadiyya School, at Kpaguri near Chorkor, at the sawmill near Nakore Petrosol, near the Tupaso school, near the VRA quarters on the Napogbakole extension, near the Star Standard Academy and near a children's orphanage. The police did not name the dead in that briefing.
At the time, the killings were not understood as the work of one man. In August 2022 the Overlord of the Waala Traditional Council, Naa Fuseini Seidu Pelpuo IV, appealed to residents for information after three bodies had been found in four months, each in a shallow grave in an uncompleted building. One was a 62-year-old night watchman at a private school, found on April 18. One was an unidentified man found on June 21. The third was a 60-year-old night watchman whose body police dug up at an uncompleted structure near his workplace on July 31. The Wa Naa told reporters he suspected "money ritualists," people who kill for body parts in the belief that they bring wealth.
In September 2022 the pace quickened. On September 11 the watchman at the Star Standard Academy went to work and did not come home. On September 14 the regional police commander, DCOP Peter Anombugri Ndekugri, told a meeting of school owners and other employers of watchmen that four private security men had gone missing in Wa that year, two of them later found dead. He said he and his officers had been having "sleepless nights." He also said he believed someone from outside the area who was "interested in these human parts" was paying local people to carry out the killings.
On September 15 a watchman at Nuur Ventures, a cold store in Wa, reported for work and did not come home. On Sunday, September 18, a community search party led by a youth leader, Suphan Iddrisu, found a body in a shallow grave in bush at Bamahu, a suburb behind Napogbakole. Family members identified the dead man as Seidu Baga, who had been reported missing that Thursday. The police exhumed the body and took it to the Regional Hospital. The next night, the police special team found the body of another man, buried in a shallow grave at Bamahu.
By then, MyJoyOnline reported, seven guards had gone missing in five months, and Citi Newsroom counted ten private security men killed in nine months. The Inspector-General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, flew to Wa with members of the Police Management Board on September 19, and the Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery, met the Wa Naa the same day to offer the government's condolences to the families. Three hundred and five more police officers were sent to the town. The police offered a reward of GH¢100,000 for information. The Wa Naa told the Inspector-General that the police response had been "not only as knee-jerk reactions but also as too little, too late."
That same week police arrested a man named Kankani Adongo at Bamahu, after work with the community search parties. By September 26, the Attorney General's regional office said 18 people had been arrested in connection with the killing of 11 people in Wa; eight had been granted bail by the Wa Circuit Court and ten were on remand. In March 2023 the Interior Minister told Parliament that 27 suspects had been arrested over the kidnapping and murder of five night guards. Eight had been discharged on the Attorney General's advice and 15 were on bail awaiting the Attorney General's report. Three more guards who disappeared in September and October 2022 had still not been found.
No source opened reports what became of those 27 suspects, or whether any of them was ever tried. That question matters for Abdulai's case, and it is taken up below.
Wa was not the only town affected. In Bole, in the Savannah Region, four people had been found half-buried between January and March 2022. The Bole Traditional Council banned passenger tricycles and motorbikes from the roads between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., warned landlords against renting to strangers, and asked the area's traditional priest to invoke a curse of madness on whoever was responsible.
After 2022 the killings in Wa slowed, but they did not end. In May and June 2024 they appeared again in Bole. A man of about 70 was found dead in the Green Valley area of the town on May 1. On May 26, Mumuni Yahaya, a night watchman of about 50 at the Bole Girls Model JHS hostel, was found dead in a room at the hostel. On June 2 an unidentified man of about 30 was found dead at the Bole St. Kizito primary school; the Member of Parliament for Bole-Bamboi, Yusif Sulemana, said that body had been found beheaded. Sulemana told Parliament that in Bole, a watchman would be "lying, taking care of whatever he's supposed to take care of, and then a stone or a block is used in hitting his head." He said that by 8:30 p.m. almost everyone in the town was indoors, under a "self-imposed curfew."
On the morning of Tuesday, June 18, 2024, two private security guards were found dead in Wa, one at the Wa East District office of the Ghana Education Service and one at the Wa Model Junior High School. The Upper West Regional Minister, Stephen Yakubu, said one of them had been struck with a stone and then had his throat cut, and that "so far, nothing shows that a human part was taken." Parliament summoned the Interior Minister, Henry Quartey, to brief the House. The Member of Parliament for Wa Central, Dr. Rashid Pelpuo, offered his own GH¢100,000 reward. He said nearly nine people had been killed in his constituency in this way the year before, "people who didn't even know that they had enemies, who just go to work with the hope that they will go home and take care of their kids."
Before dawn on Monday, July 15, 2024, a young bus conductor named Richard Opoku, who had come to Wa with a trailer carrying salt, was found with his throat cut behind the trailer at Duori, near Dobile. He had chosen to rest on a mat outside rather than in the room he was offered. Police arrested the salt owner and the driver for questioning. The Wa Municipal Chief Executive, Tahiru Issahaku Moomin, called the killings a "coordinated crime" and said that while earlier victims had body parts missing, the recent victims had not. The municipal security council began joint police and military patrols around the clock, and a watch committee of volunteers, accredited by the police, began patrolling at night. By local counts at the time, 16 or 17 people had been killed in Wa in three years, and no one had been convicted.
In February 2025 the Savannah Regional Minister, Salisu Be-Awuribe, visited crime scenes in Bole after another series of killings there and promised that those responsible would be found.
Among the families these killings left behind was that of a night guard killed at a private school in Wa in 2022. In July 2024 the Ghana News Agency reported that his eight-year-old daughter, Rihainatu Dramani, had been given a full school scholarship by a local charity, Relcaso Ghana, after his death left the family destitute. She used her speech at a parents' meeting to ask the authorities to end the killings, which she said were "rendering many child orphans in Wa."
None of the deaths described in this section has been publicly linked by name to Shariff Abdulai, in court or by the police. They are given here because they are the killings the people of Wa were living with, and because some of them may be among the 23 he admitted. Which ones are, and which are not, has not been published.
Issah Yahaya was 55 and worked as a night watchman in Wa. He was found on the evening of September 21, 2025, in the motor mechanic's shop at Dobile, near the Wa New Market. The sources opened do not give his family or how long he had worked there. His is the only name that appears in the official account of Abdulai's conviction. The police statement on the sentence said the court had sentenced Abdulai "for the murder of Issah Yahaya and twenty two (22) others."
His killing also led to the arrest. The police had found blood on the cement block at the scene and the knife on his face. When they later searched Abdulai's hideout, they found a bicycle and a cutlass that were identified as Yahaya's property.
After the Yahaya killing, the Inspector-General of Police, Christian Tetteh Yohuno, sent a special investigation team from national headquarters to help the regional command. On October 3, 2025, acting on what the police called credible intelligence and initial forensic analysis, the team arrested a 25-year-old man named Mahamuda Lamin at Dondoli, a suburb of Wa, in connection with Yahaya's death. Police said that his interrogation produced leads pointing to a second man.
With the help of the assemblyman for the area and residents of Dondoli, police arrested Shariff Abdulai at Adabiya, another suburb of Wa, on October 6. A search of his person turned up a Villaon keypad mobile phone and an X-Base solar-powered radio, later identified as Yahaya's. Citi Newsroom reported that Abdulai first said he had bought the two items at a galamsey (informal gold mining) site in Bole.
Police then searched the metal container in the bush near the Wa airstrip. According to the Ghana News Agency's account of the police briefing, they recovered a sack of cooked meat, a "specially designed cutlass," a bicycle and a pickaxe handle. The bicycle and the cutlass were identified as Yahaya's. The police said forensic analysis of the items was under way and that they were still trying to establish whether anyone else had taken part.
On Wednesday, October 8, 2025, the regional police commander, Assistant Commissioner of Police Francis Yiribaare, briefed reporters in Wa. He thanked the Inspector-General and the people of Dondoli. A police statement reported by the Ghana News Agency on October 12 said more than 500 officers had been sent to the area on various operations over four years in search of the people responsible.
The Upper West police commander gave the first account of Abdulai's admissions at the October 8 briefing. "During questioning, the suspect confessed to killing 15 people in Wa Municipality since 2021," Yiribaare said. "He also admitted to killing three madmen and two watchmen at Bole, one madman in Banda Nkwanta, and a madwoman in Bamboi."
According to the commander, Abdulai said he usually targeted watchmen and sometimes people with mental illness, at night. "He carries victims on his shoulder and buries them in bushes unnoticed," Yiribaare said.
These were statements made to police in custody, reported second-hand by the police at a press briefing. The commander did not say which of the region's recorded cases Abdulai's admissions matched, and he did not name any of the 22 people other than Yahaya. The police said only that their 15 recorded cases from 2021 and 2022 and the most recent death had similar causes. Whether the "15 people in Wa" Abdulai described at the briefing were the same 15 cases the police had on file is not stated in any source opened.
The police statement reported on October 12 added one more claim: that he "is said to have confessed that he set fire at the murder scene" and that he had eaten part of a victim. That statement is presented here as the police reported it. No court finding on it has been published, and no forensic result on the meat found in his container has been reported.
Mahamuda Lamin, 25, was the first man arrested. By October 8 he had been remanded by the Wa Magistrate Court, to reappear on October 21, 2025. The Ghanaian Times called him Abdulai's accomplice. Other reports described the two men only as suspects arrested in the same investigation. No source opened reports what Lamin was charged with, whether he was charged with anything beyond the initial remand, or what has become of his case. He was not mentioned in any of the reporting on Abdulai's sentence.
After his arrest, Abdulai was processed for court and committed for trial by the District Magistrate Court. Committal is the step in Ghana by which a lower court sends a serious charge such as murder up to the High Court for trial. The dates of his first appearance and of the committal itself were not published in any source opened.
On Wednesday, March 4, 2026, Abdulai was arraigned before the High Court in Wa, presided over by Justice Osei-Wusu Antwi. He was represented by a lawyer. According to the Upper West Regional Police Command's statement, which was signed by the regional commander, by then Deputy Commissioner of Police Francis Yiribaare, the accused "pleaded guilty simpliciter to the charge." A plea of guilty simpliciter is a plain plea of guilty, with no qualification, entered so that no trial is needed.
"Upon his own plea," the statement went on, "the presiding Judge, Justice Osei-Wusu Antwi, sentenced him to life imprisonment In Hard Labour." He was ordered to serve the sentence at Nsawam Medium Security Prison. Arraignment, plea and sentence all took place on the same day. There was no trial and therefore no witnesses.
The statement also said: "The convict pleaded guilty to killing sixteen (16) people in Wa, five (5) in Bole and one (1) each in Banda Nkwanta and Bamboi." That is 23 people. At the time of his arrest he had described 15 in Wa and 7 elsewhere, or 22. The difference is one person in Wa. The sources do not explain it, but Issah Yahaya, killed in Wa in September 2025, would account for it if the 15 he described at first were the earlier killings. That is an inference, not a published fact.
On the published record, the case divides as follows.
Convicted: Shariff Abdulai was convicted on his own plea of guilty to murder at the High Court in Wa on March 4, 2026. The police statement says the sentence was for "the murder of Issah Yahaya and twenty two (22) others." Issah Yahaya is the only victim the authorities have named.
Charged: the police statement, Graphic Online, the Ghana News Agency and Citi Newsroom all say he pleaded guilty "to the charge" of murder, in the singular. Adom Online and MyJoyOnline said he pleaded guilty to "multiple counts of murder" and to "the charges," and Rainbow Radio said "all charges." The charge sheet itself has not been published, so the number of counts, and which deaths each count named, cannot be confirmed from the sources opened. It is not known whether the 22 other deaths were each charged as separate counts, or were admitted in court and taken into account, which the police wording "for the murder of Issah Yahaya and twenty two (22) others" could describe either way.
Admitted: 23 killings in all, 16 in Wa, 5 in Bole, 1 in Banda Nkwanta and 1 in Bamboi, by the police account of what he said in custody and in court. By the October 2025 police account, the Bole deaths were three men with mental illness and two watchmen, the Banda Nkwanta death was a man with mental illness and the Bamboi death was a woman with mental illness. Most of the Wa deaths, by his account, were night watchmen.
Suspected but not shown: the full list of killings of watchmen and others in Wa and Bole from 2021 to 2025, which local officials put at different times at 10, 11, 15, 16 and 17 in Wa alone, plus several more in Bole. No published record matches Abdulai's admissions to these cases one by one.
Until 2023, murder in Ghana carried the death penalty, though, as Citi Newsroom noted, no Ghanaian president had signed a death warrant since 1993. In July 2023 Parliament passed the Criminal Offences (Amendment) Act, which replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment for murder and other capital offenses, Citi Newsroom reported at the time. Sahara Reporters described Abdulai's sentence as "the maximum sentence allowed by law."
On March 5, 2026, the Member of Parliament for Wa West, Peter Lanchene Toobu, speaking at the regional police headquarters, praised the court "for opting for life imprisonment instead of the death penalty." He said the sentence "ensures accountability" and showed that crimes would be punished. He also warned against blaming whole families or ethnic groups for one man's crimes: "crime is individualistic," he said.
In Wa, people who had lived through the killings welcomed the sentence. Speaking to Citi Newsroom the day after, a resident named Jacob Maali called it "a big relief for the lives of the people, especially residents in Wa." He added: "We will still be glad if further investigations are done to know whether he acted alone or if there are other people linked to the issue."
Lillian Asiedu said the fear had been hardest on women and people who moved around alone. "Even moving around was frightening," she said. "If you took a step and there were no people around, you would feel afraid that the killers might be somewhere watching you." Clement Kajatanga said that "for the past years, the whole region has been traumatised by the killings. Anytime you are travelling or going somewhere, you are not even sure whether you are safe."
After the arrest in October 2025, Dr. Jones Opoku-Ware, a criminologist at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, told JoyNews that the case showed how hard such offenders are to catch when their attacks are spread across towns and years. He pointed to Abdulai's choice of victims: "mad people and watchmen." Those two groups had in common that they were often alone at night.
Several parts of this case remain open on the public record.
Whether he acted alone. In September 2022 the police said their intelligence suggested "more than one person" was involved in the Wa killings. The regional commander that year spoke of outsiders paying local people for body parts, and the Wa Naa called them "obvious spiritual killings." In 2024 the Wa Municipal Chief Executive called them a "coordinated crime." In October 2025 the police said they were still investigating whether there were accomplices. No further finding has been published, and Abdulai's plea did not settle it.
The ritual-killing theory. In 2022 bodies were reported found with organs and genitals removed, and with objects that witnesses linked to ritual nearby. Abdulai's account, as the police gave it, was different: he hit his victims, carried them off and buried them. The 2024 Wa killings, by the Municipal Chief Executive's account, did not involve missing body parts. Whether every one of the 2022 killings was his, or whether some were the work of others, is not known from the published record.
The earlier suspects. In 2022 and 2023 at least 27 people were arrested over the Wa killings, including Kankani Adongo, and 15 were on bail awaiting the Attorney General's decision as of March 2023. No source opened reports whether any of them was charged, tried, convicted or cleared, or how their cases relate to Abdulai's admissions.
The numbers. Abdulai's count rose from 22 at the October 2025 briefing to 23 at sentencing. Starr FM reported the total as 24, though the four figures it gave add up to 23. The official figures for killings in Wa before his arrest also varied from report to report.
His age and identity. The police gave his age as 30 in October 2025. Graphic Online gave it as 44 in March 2026. Neither the police nor the court is reported to have explained the difference.
The cannibalism claim. The October 12, 2025, police statement reported by the Ghana News Agency said he was "said to have confessed" to eating part of a victim. It has not been tested in court.
As of the latest sources opened (Citi Newsroom, March 5 and 6, 2026), Shariff Abdulai was serving a life sentence with hard labor, ordered to be served at Nsawam Medium Security Prison. No appeal against the conviction or the sentence was reported in those sources. The other 22 people he admitted killing had not been publicly named, the charge sheet had not been published, and the status of Mahamuda Lamin's case had not been reported. Whether further charges have been or will be brought against anyone else for the Wa and Bole killings had not been announced.
2021: Police record four killings in Wa, at Kpaguri, Loho, Kambale-Mangu and between Kaleo and Loho.
January to March 2022: Four people found half-buried in Bole; the Bole Traditional Council bans night tricycle and motorbike traffic.
April 18, 2022: A 62-year-old night watchman at a private school in Wa is found buried in an uncompleted building.
July 31, 2022: Police dig up the body of a 60-year-old night watchman near his workplace in Wa.
September 11, 2022: The watchman at Star Standard Academy, Wa, disappears.
September 15-18, 2022: Seidu Baga, a watchman at a cold store, disappears; his body is found by a search party at Bamahu.
September 19, 2022: The Inspector-General of Police and the Interior Minister visit Wa; Kankani Adongo is arrested; a GH¢100,000 reward is announced.
September 26, 2022: 18 people under arrest over 11 Wa killings.
March 2, 2023: The Interior Minister tells Parliament 27 suspects have been arrested; three guards are still missing.
July 25, 2023: Parliament passes the act replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment.
May 1 to June 2, 2024: Three men, including the watchman Mumuni Yahaya, are found dead in Bole.
June 18, 2024: Two security guards are found dead in Wa, at the Wa East education office and the Wa Model JHS.
July 15, 2024: The bus conductor Richard Opoku is found dead at Duori, Wa.
September 21, 2025: Issah Yahaya, 55, a night watchman, is found dead at Dobile, Wa.
October 3, 2025: Mahamuda Lamin, 25, is arrested at Dondoli.
October 6, 2025: Shariff Abdulai is arrested at Adabiya, carrying Yahaya's phone and radio.
October 8, 2025: Police announce that Abdulai has confessed to 15 killings in Wa since 2021 and 7 in Bole, Banda Nkwanta and Bamboi.
Between October 2025 and March 2026: Abdulai is committed for trial by the District Magistrate Court (date not published).
March 4, 2026: Abdulai pleads guilty simpliciter to murder before Justice Osei-Wusu Antwi at the High Court in Wa and is sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor; police say he admitted 23 killings.
March 5-6, 2026 (latest sources): Residents welcome the sentence; no appeal reported.