Posted by The PM News on
Evangelist Timothy Adewale Adetona, 42, was full of life and vigour, and he had the least expectation of death when it struck. Penultimate weekend, he hosted relations and friends from all over the country who came to Jos for the wedding of his sister in-law. Six days later, he died - in the Jos riots.
Evangelist Timothy Adewale Adetona, 42, was full of life and vigour, and he had the least expectation of death when it struck. Penultimate weekend, he hosted relations and friends from all over the country who came to Jos for the wedding of his sister in-law. Six days later, he died - in the Jos riots.
Timothy's elder brother, Benson Aderibigbe Adetona, a Lagos resident, recalled yesterday that at about 9.40a.m. on Friday, Timothy called to alert his relations that Jos was on fire; that his house at G.13, Nasarawa Gwom, had been torched; and so also was another house at F.18, Nasarawa Gwom, which was under his care.
Timothy said he had taken his wife and five children and fled, and he requested concerted prayers for their safety.
Efforts by relations to reach Timothy on phone after that were fruitless as he wasn't picking the calls. At a point, his phone went dead. Benson was later to learn that Timothy and his family took shelter in another house on G Street located next to a premises that was torched in the last riots and is currently uninhabited.
Timothy, sensing that the invading mob would crush them in their place of shelter, helped his wife and children over the fence into the uninhabited premises. He also made to jump over the fence, but just then the invading mob broke into the house where he was. He must have calculated that the mob would follow him into the uninhabited premises if he went ahead, and that would put his wife and children at grave risk. And so, he diverted the mob by heading back into the compound and running around the premises.
The wife said she had thought her husband followed them into the uninhabited premises and was only lying low somewhere. But Timothy had actually made himself a decoy for the murderous mob that pursued him until they caught up with him and killed him.
It took relations in Lagos to enlist the help of the Police in Jos by phone to go look for Timothy after some hours that he went missing. That was when they located his body on the roadside - stone dead.
Such was the human toll of the Jos crisis at the weekend that has left not only a wife widowed and children fatherless, but also relations elsewhere grieving over a needless carnage.