Posted by Rotimi Williams and Kunle Owolabi on
For Mr. Osita Gabriel Nchekube, Sunday, June 5, 2005, was another day like the previous ones. He just returned from a business trip to Togo on Friday. He had had a hectic week, so, he decided to rest.
For Mr. Osita Gabriel Nchekube, Sunday, June 5, 2005, was another day like the previous ones. He just returned from a business trip to Togo on Friday. He had had a hectic week, so, he decided to rest. A newly married man, he was recently blessed with a baby girl of about six months old.
At 35, he had the world at his feet and everything appeared to be going in his favour until that fatal Sunday, two weeks ago, when some heartless individuals badgered into his life and eclipsed his rising star.
On that fateful Sunday, around 5 o'clock in the evening, and he and his wife with their baby, left their Number 39, Hassan Idowu Street, Aguda, Surulere, Lagos, on a visit to a close relation. That evening outing was his last one on the surface of the earth. As he drove along the clumsy street of Aguda, he had no premonition that the hounds of hell were lurking around, baying for innocent blood to suck.
According to the widow of the victim, Mrs. Tina Nchekube, her husband was driving along Ayetoro Street, around the same Aguda at about 7 pm, they came across a party on the street. This made it difficult for him to move because there was a limited space, which could not contain two cars at a time. Nchekube had to exercise a little bit of patience to allow the oncoming vehicles to pass. He did endure. But when it was his turn to move, a Toyota Corolla car in front of him surged to life. Nchekube maintained his position, but the car, in an attempt to reverse and wriggle out of the traffic, hit his Mercedes Benz saloon car, with registration number Lagos GG 349 AAA, breaking its headlamp.
The owner of the Corolla car did not care to come down from his car to take a look at the havoc he wrecked on the other car, let alone admitting guilt or saying sorry. He started the engine of his car and moved on. Angered by the impunity of the Corolla car owner, Nchekube went in hot pursuit of the runaway car. Fortunately enough for him, he did not have to chase for too long, when both of them were ensnared in the evening traffic. He quickly got down from his car and dashed forward to where the Corolla car was. He challenged the man behind the wheel for not showing an iota of concern or sympathy for the damage done to his car.
An argument ensued between both men. The man did not want to admit his culpability. Nchekube, insisted that the man wronged him. He did not even entertain any fear that a seemingly harmless disagreement over careless driving could lead to a loss of life. And his own life for that matter. The demand for explanation from the Corolla car owner, who was later identified as Mr. Kayode Oyekanmi (alias Obasanjo) later proved to be his undoing.
Nchekube's wife narrated what followed her husband's request for explanation thus:
'When he (Obasanjo) hit my husband's car and broke one of the headlamps, he zoomed off without caring to say sorry. When this happened, my husband came down from his car and ran to him, demanding that he should come down and see the damage he had done to his car. As he talked to the man, the man did not come down. Rather, he was talking to my husband in Yoruba language, which he did not understand. At this point, some of the area boys around the place noticed that it was their chairman that my husband was arguing with. They rushed to the scene. Instead of settling the dispute between the man and my husband, they cordoned off the man. The man now told my husband in English that if he dared to stand in his way, his boys (Obasanjo's) would ‘deal' with him. My husband insisted that Obasanjo could not break his car's headlamp and leave just like that. Obasanjo subsequently instructed his boys to ‘deal' with him ruthlessly.
'With this instruction given to the area boys, they blocked my husband and cleared the road for their chairman to escape. Afterwards, they all descended heavily on my husband. With any available weapon they could lay their hands on, such as heavy planks, broken bottles and rods, they beat him left, right and center. They shouted ole, ole (thief! thief!) at him. When I noticed what was happening, with my baby in my arms, I started shouting for help. But none came. My husband was beaten to the state of unconsciousness and left on the scene. They all disappeared into thin air."
According to an eyewitness, an okada rider, who pleaded anonymity, while the deceased was being beaten, one of the hoodlums brought out a broken bottle, hit the man's face with it and squeezed it. Blood gushed out. Nchekube then lost steam and fell flat on the ground. Sensing that he might give up, they carried him in his state of unconsciousness and dumped him inside the gutter.
The okada rider, who claimed to have witnessed the scene, volunteered that the victim would probably have survived the beating, but for one of them who hit his eyes with a broken bottle.
Before the hoodlums left, they also smashed the side glass of Nchekube's car and ran away. While these social miscreants were at it, Tina (Nchekube's wife), with her six month-old baby, looked on helplessly. Before her very eyes, they widowed her. She was still waiting for her husband to come, blood-stained. That did not happen. It was a passer-by, who assisted in lifting her husband from the murky water. They dragged him into his car and drove off to a nearby hospital. When the doctor at the hospital saw the extent of injury the man sustained, he could not attend to him. Instead, he quickly gave them a referral letter to the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba.
Before they got to the hospital, the man died. However, Tina did not know. And the doctor did not tell her so. The doctor only said the man was in a state of coma.
'My husband died on the way to LUTH without my knowledge. However, when we got to the emergency unit, the doctors, who wanted to administer treatment, observed that he was dead but they did not tell me."
The truth of the matter was that Nchekube was certified 'dead on arrival," by the time they got to LUTH.
She was asked to phone a close relation and tell him to come to LUTH. Tina was cunningly shoved aside under the pretence that his husband was placed on oxygen and was receiving treatment.
So, she quickly called on Mr. Amechi Okeke, one of her husband's relations that he should proceed to LUTH immediately. Based on the distress call, Okeke rushed to LUTH and the doctor told him Nchekube was dead. The situation at the hospital became tense. A cloud of gloom hung loosely in the sky for the Nchekubes. Their next point of call was the Aguda Police Station to report the incident. In the interim, message went round Lagos and beyond, notifying the rest members of the family of the heartbreaking incident.
Meanwhile, that night, the police also swung into action, sending signals to all police stations within Lagos metropolis. By Monday, five of the suspects, including the principal actor in the murder saga, Oyekanmi, alias Obasanjo, who is also the Chairman of Okada Riders Association, Aguda Branch, were arrested.
The case was subsequently transferred to the Panti Police Station, Yaba. The suspects are now cooling off in police custody. When Sunday Punch visited the Aguda home of the Nchekubes on Thursday, there was a palpable atmosphere of grief. It was the day the family chose for the Christian wake.
The street of the house was blocked. Right and left, there was a foreshadowing of sorrow. One does not need a soothsayer to prophesy that the street has lost a gem in his prime. The picture of gloom was discernible. People stood in twos and threes, wearing mournful looks was visibly written on their faces. A handful of policemen were seen milling around, apparently to forestall a possible breakdown of law and order or spontaneous surge of bottled -up anger from the victim's people, the Aguleri of Anambra State.
Family members and sympathizers clustered around the widow. All of them were in tears. She mustered enough courage to say a few words and they were words crying for justice. She said she wanted nothing but justice - to be done and to be seen to have been done.
'The feeling of guilt gripped those who killed my husband. Some of them later came pretending to be sympathizers, promising to help the family fish out the rest assailants. Of course, they were only shedding crocodile tears, which did not move the family members. I only want justice to prevail. I want justice to be done. Those who murdered my husband should be punished according to the law because he did not do anything to them."
For the President of Aguleri Welfare Association, Lagos Branch, Chief Anthony Nwabekwu, caution is what wisdom dictates at this nervous moment. He said he was amazed that a minor argument could lead to the murder of a fellow human being. He too called for justice from the government, while promising that his kinsmen would not do anything rash about it.
'We want justice to be done. The event that led to his death, ordinarily, should not have happened because it was a mere argument that later degenerated into that sad occurrence. Since the arrest of the culprits, their group has been boasting around that they will get them released because they are the ‘sons of the soil'. But we do not listen to them. Whereever we hail from, Nigeria is one. And there is law in the country. We want to follow the normal process. I have been able to calm down my people in order to ensure that we do not do anything rash. We prefer to wait for justice from the government. We have persuaded our people against retaliation, as it does not bring back the dead. When you retaliate, you will attack innocent souls that do not have even a remotest connection with the event. Therefore, we have resolved that the best thing to do is to follow the due process of law, get all the people involved arrested, tried in the court of law and ensure that justice is done. That is our aim."
In the intervening time, the Aguleri people are not taking the boast by the hoodlums that they will use their 'connections" to get their people freed from the claws of the police, lightly. They have written a petition to the Acting Inspector General of Police, Mr. Sunday Ehindero, over the matter.
The petition, dated June 13,2005 and signed by the President and Legal Adviser of Aguleri Welfare Association, Lagos Branch, Nwabekwu and Barrister Chinedu Idigo respectively, described the action of Oyekanmi (Obasanjo) as 'barbaric, unwarranted and uncivilized." It beseeched the police boss to use his good offices to dispense justice without fear of favour.
The letter read in part: ' Sir, the matter was reported first to the Aguda Police Station in Surulere, Lagos and the case was eventually transferred to Panti Police Station. And so far, the said Kayode Oyekanmi has been arrested with some of the miscreants. Members of the late Nchekube's family informed us that some of the other miscreants have been boasting that they will use their ‘connections' with the state police command to make sure that they get their men held in the custody at Panti Police station, released.
'Our appeal, sir, is that you use your good offices and have this matter investigated thoroughly and preferably transfer it to a federal command so that not only will justice be done, but will be seen as having been done. The blood of Osita Nchekube cries for justice and this can only be done when the perpetrators of this heinous crime are brought to justice. This will serve as a deterrent to other miscreants in Lagos State and beyond, who go about harassing, intimidating and sending innocent people to their untimely graves."
When contacted, the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, Mr. Olayinka Balogun said of the case:
'It is true we are investigating the case against the suspects. They (suspects) have assisted the police tremendously in their quest to get to the root of the matter and we have made appreciable progress. The suspects were arrested on a tip off. They are currently in our custody ad we are not foreclosing the interrogation of any other person or persons who we feel could assist us in our investigation. We shall quiz anybody, no matter how highly-placed, who, in our estimation, has remotely or directly contributed to the death of the victim.
'It is barbaric for anybody to think that he or she could take the life of another person just like that. This is a country governed by laws and not a banana republic. Human life is sacred and should be treated so. The constitution stipulates what should be done to anybody found wanting in this regard. That there are moves to release the suspects by the police is far from the truth. We have not completed investigation, it is still going on. Like I told you, we are already getting to the root of the matter. So, for anybody to say that a suspect in an ongoing investigation in a murder charge will be released is not fair to the police. We shall conduct a detailed investigation and will not spare anybody found culpable. At the end of the investigation, the suspects will definitely be charge to court.
'The police of today is that of efficiency, transparency and integrity. We shall get to the root of the matter and leave no stone unturned at ensuring that justice is done.
Nobody should nurse any fear regarding police sincerity and capability. We solicit the assistance, understanding and cooperation of members of the public as currently existed. We are here to serve the public and we shall do it better. All those indicted by police investigation would face the full wrath of the law".
Sunday Punch, June 19, 2005