The day would be remembered for a long time to come. In reputation and dread – the feeling it delivered won’t go away soon. And for those, who knew her even closely, the scars it brought, equally, would remain a constant reminder of that horrific experience.
Full of life and hopes as she sank into bed that evening, there was nothing to suggest that danger was hovering upon her head. Calm, loveable and loaded with lofty ambitions, Solape Oladipupo, a young female Air Force personnel, had no reason to fear. However, by the break of dawn, several hours after retiring to sleep – on the morning of Sunday, March 12, 2017, to be precise – everything went up in flames. Shomzy, as her friends fondly called her, was shot dead in the most brutal manner by the very person she had ‘shared’ her heart with in recent months. The Badagry, Lagos-born lady was killed by her lover and fellow military officer, Kalu Ben, at the Air Force Base in Makurdi, capital of Benue State.
One week after her death, family members and friends of the young woman are still locked in mourning, wondering how death snatched their jewel away so suddenly. They describe her demise as an irreplaceable loss.
“R.I.P Shomzy Shomzy, your death is something I can’t forget so easily because your military plans are still in your mind. Well I can’t continue crying my dear, all I have to do is to let go of what I can’t change,” one friend wrote on the Facebook page of the victim – succinctly capturing the general feeling of all those who knew her. Torrents of eulogies still flood the victim’s Facebook account.
But while the cold-blooded murder of Oladipupo still grips the nation like an incurable fever, her death is merely a minute fraction of the many senseless murders that have taken place across the country in recent weeks. Prompted to pull the ‘trigger’ at the slightest excitement, men, women – young and old – have continued to spill the blood of their loved ones in terrifying fashion, leaving dozens of individuals shocked to their marrows.
For example, on Thursday, March 9, a young doctor, Emmanuel Ogah, followed in the footsteps of Kalu in taking laws into his hands. Overwhelmed by his emotions and unable to contain his rage, he hacked his 62-year-old mother, Janet, a food vendor, to death in their Itele- Ota, Ogun State, home. The suspect, who is said to have returned home only three days before the incident after completing the one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps scheme, confessed to committing the act because his mother was in the habit of insulting and disgracing him in the presence of her apprentices. He snuffed life out of her by inflicting several stabs on her stomach and other body parts. It was a gory sight.
That is not all. Days earlier, the spotlight shifted to Lagos’ capital, Ikeja, when Akinremi Street, a popular part of the town, was thrown into chaos. A 50-year-old Information and Communications Technology consultant, Mr. Kayode Oso, was murdered by his new employee, Precious Victor, in cahoots with two other accomplices – Kelechi Kalu and Ahmed Abubakar. The victim, who prior to that time had only hired the suspect to run a bar he just opened in the area, had arrived at the place that fateful Saturday afternoon to relax when the gang pounced on him. His family, friends and all those who knew him continue to live with the pains of his tragic demise.
“At about 4pm on that day, Kayode went to the bar. At a point, he had an argument with Victor and threatened to sack him. In what appeared to be a premeditated action, two other men came in and pounced on Kayode. They stabbed him in different parts of his body. When they saw that he had been injured and didn’t have any strength to struggle with them, they took his car key, locked him up in his office and fled. It was the police who later discovered his corpse at the place,” a friend to the deceased said.
Earlier in February, the nation woke up to the gory sight of the dismembered body of a mother of three, Sherifat Bello. The young woman was cut to pieces and dumped at an uncompleted building by her 36-year-old husband, Sakiru, under mysterious circumstances. By the time he was paraded by the police in Lagos, Bello’s body had started decomposing. The images were indeed tear-provoking.
“After we didn’t see Sherifat for days, I had to report the case to the Area ‘B’ Police Command. Sakiru pretended to be searching for her as well, not knowing that he had killed her. When we called him, he said he was somewhere in Ibadan and gave us an address but when we got to the place, he was not there. The police later arrested him in Lagos where he was hiding. He killed my daughter and cut her corpse into bits,” heartbroken father of the victim, revealed.
Elder sister of the deceased while giving more insight into the gruesome murder, said the culprit had had the plan of killing her in the pipeline for long. She said her sibling had complained of threats to her life on few occasions but that they never took it seriously until the incident finally happened.
“My sister was the one taking care of responsibilities in the home before she was killed. About a year ago, she told me that Sakiru wanted to use her for rituals; we never really took it seriously even though they became separated after the two families met following that issue. We never knew he was eventually going to kill her,” the middle-aged woman said, fighting back tears.
In December 2016, the Majidun, Ikorodu area of Lagos was thrown into mourning when a woman stabbed her husband to death with a kitchen knife over his failure to provide money for Christmas cooking. According to witnesses, the incident followed a heated confrontation between the couple – Mr. and Mrs. Romanus Odo, right inside their apartment.
“The wife prevented her husband from leaving the house, insisting that he must give her money to buy chicken for Christmas. She accused him of spending money on women and neglecting her and the children. Even the man later dropped N1,000, what we heard next was a shout for help. The woman had stabbed him to death with a knife. She had always threatened to kill him one day and eventually made good her threat,” one neighbour said.
A few days before then, news of another premeditated murder made the rounds again after a 22-year-old Cameroonian domestic worker, Joel Ludguo, stabbed his boss, Temidayo Adeleke, to death in the Ikoyi area of Lagos.
According to witnesses, Ludguo killed the young woman after she failed to accede to his demand of N15,000 – part payment of his December salary, so he could make a short trip. Adeleke’s death came a few days after she returned to the country from the United States and only weeks away from her marriage. Family members are yet to fully come over the calamity.
“Madam usually gave him money apart from his salary and even bought him a new phone after employing him. She treated him very well but Joel still went ahead to kill her. Her death is a huge loss for all of us,” a family friend of the victim, said.
Sad as it is, these cases merely capture the rising wave of premeditated murders in Nigeria in recent weeks. While only a handful of these gruesome killings are reported, hundreds others never get to be heard of each year in many of the country’s over 774 local government areas. In 2016 alone, Lagos recorded around 246 murder cases, up from the 220 cases witnessed the previous year. For a city with a bulging population and the propensity for individuals to commit crime, experts say that figure could be several times higher.
“There are surely more unreported cases of murder in Lagos than the official figures from the police,” sociologist, Abbey Shobayo, told us. “The city is a crimogenic one going by its population and unequal opportunities for survival. As a result of these attributes, individuals are pushed to embrace deviant behaviours in the quest of satisfying personal targets and or desires.
“But Lagos is not the only place. Other cities across Nigeria are also witnessing a rising wave of senseless murders. Even though we can attribute mental instability to many of these premeditated murders we have seen in recent times, we must not also forget to look at the social factors that have made such tragedies possible.
“People are hungry, there are no jobs to absorb them and daily survival has become increasingly difficult. At moments like this, it is not strange to have people shooting above their frustration limit by even taking to acts of violence. Without addressing the social factors responsible, it will be tough getting to the root of these rising cases of murders we have seen,” he said.
Psychologist, Stephen Udi, says the disturbing development is a reflection of rising rate of ‘silent’ mental cases among many Nigerians today.
According to him, while most violent cases could be linked to psychiatric disorders in clinical sciences, there are instances where such individuals would show no signs of abnormality until when they had caused some form of damage much later.
“People have different reasons for committing murder,” he said. “It may be premeditated or spur of the moment action. Whichever way it was committed, such behaviour can only emanate from a sick mental formation.
“There are so many people roaming the streets of Nigeria today without knowing that they are indeed mentally imbalanced especially because they don’t exhibit any form of violence. The truth is that such disorder is latent in them and shall surely be manifested given the right type of excitement. People must be vigilant and take note of funny behaviours by others around them,” he added.
A recent investigation by us indeed revealed a rise in mental illness cases in Nigeria. According to the report, psychiatrists, who linked the development to economic hardship, depression, distress and anxiety, among others, explained that while most psychiatric disorders were related to drug abuse prior to 2016, non-drug related cases were now on the increase.
Udi said such findings should worry the society and push it to pay more attention to the sanity of citizens especially with cases of murder gaining prominence by the day.
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