READ: Why I helped mum to dump my brother s corpse in soakaway

...‘I can’t say she didn’t kill him’

Following the expulsion and banishment of his family from the Baruwa community in Ipaja, La­gos, for the alleged killing of his 20-year-old sibling by his mother and the subsequent dumping of his corpse inside a sep­tic pit, popularly called soakaway, in the adjoin­ing house, the younger brother of the deceased, Samson Adekunle, has explained why he assisted his mother in committing the alleged crime...


Samson, according to an on line news medium The Point, had been forcibly ejected from their house by angry residents of the community, said that fear of opposition from fam­ily members made him and his mother to take the decision to dispose the corpse of his late brother, Kayode, in their neigh­bour’s soakaway.

He explained that they were constrained to con­sider taking such a strange action, because they were of the conviction that they would not be allowed to bury the corpse of the de­ceased within the prem­ises of the house owned by a relation.

Samson said from their previous experience, the family was prevented from burying their grand-mother, who died some time ago in the house, within the premises of the property. He said it was to avoid the hullabaloo that greeted their earlier attempt to bury a family member in the premises of the property that he and his mother decided to do away with the corpse of his deceased brother in the manner they did.

Samson said, “We are not happy over what we did because he was sick before he died. He was my elder brother, though I cannot ascertain his age. When I came back from work and I confirmed him dead, my mother suggest­ed that we should dispose of him inside our neigh­bour’s soakaway, since we could not bury him in our compound, because of possible opposition from family members.

“She said this because the house is owned by our father’s younger brother. When our grandmother died and we attempted to bury her in the com­pound, we faced a lot of problems from the family, and in order not to en­counter the same situation again, our mother sug­gested we should dump him inside the soakaway and I assisted her.”

He, however, said in spite of the rumour mak­ing the rounds within the community that his moth­er might have deliberately killed his deceased elder brother, no one had the evidence that she actually committed such a heinous crime.

Samson claimed that be­fore his death, his elder brother, who was ill for a long time before his recent death, was also epileptic. “I cannot say our mother killed my brother and I cannot say she was not the one, because before I left home that morning, my brother was still alive only for me to be called to come home on time that he had died. And when I got home, I confirmed that he had truly died, and immediately, my mother told me that we should dispose of him in order to avoid what happened to us when our grandmother died,” he said.

Samson also confessed that he and his mother ac­tually took the deceased’s body from the house and threw him in the pit, hop­ing that nobody would get to know that such a thing took place.

He also said that he was later arrested over the matter by police opera­tives from Alagolo Police Station, while some resi­dents also apprehended his mother. But residents of the Ishaga Olaogun community accused the mother of the decease of killing her first son, before throwing his corpse inside the pit.

According to some of them, who spoke with The Point, the woman allegedly re­solved to kill her first son after expending huge sums of mon­ey on his treatment for an undisclosed disease for several months without any sign of his health im­proving.

The on line me­dium also gathered that she must have taken the decision to end the life of the 20-year-old, because of the “shame and disgrace” her epilep­tic son had brought to the family in the community.

A resident, Ifedayo Kazeem, said, “When we did our own find­ings on the incident, we realised that the woman must have killed the boy because of certain reasons. First, the boy had been sick for months and they didn’t have the financial capac­ity to take him to the hospital, while the woman had spent all she had on him. So, there is a possibil­ity that she decided to end the boy’s life in order to end what she had been going through.

“I am saying this because when we caught the deceased’s brother, Samson, he confessed that his brother had not died before he left the house in the morning of that day, but he was pronounced dead by his mother later the same day. He said he was at work when his mother called him that Kayode had died and he was surprised, but since he didn’t see her killing him, he could not accuse her.”

Another member of the community, who simply identified himself as Mukaila, said he was sure the woman ended the ep­ileptic boy’s life, be­cause she was always ashamed of having such a child.“That mama definitely killed her son before throwing him in that pit.

She was always ashamed of the boy because he was epi­leptic. And I believe she must have taken his life because of that,” he said.

Explaining how the residents discovered the boy’s corpse in­side the ‘soak away’, Mukaila told The Point that the stench from the corpse had enveloped the com­munity and the de­velopment prompted the youths to trace its source to one of the ‘soakaways’ within the neighbourhood, where they discov­ered the deceased’s corpse.

He said, “After we had been dis­turbed for days by a foul smell within the neighbourhood, on Saturday we de­cided to open a soak­away beside Iya Fali’s (Mrs. Bose Adekun­le) house. When we opened it, we discov­ered something was inside it. At first, we thought it was a goat. But when we gave it a closer look, we realised it was a hu­man being. Immedi­ately, we informed the landlord of the house that has the soak away before we moved to Alagolo Police Sta­tion, where we report­ed the case.

“After much pon­dering on the iden­tity of the deceased, one man suggested it might be the sick Kay­ode, because he had not been seen outside for some time now. Having heard this, we stylishly called the woman’s daugh­ter, named Falilat, to come and see the corpse and she con­firmed it to be that of her brother.”

He added that but to the surprise of ev­eryone, they met the woman on her trying to escape, while they were returning from the police station, where they had gone to lodge the report.

“We arrested her and handed her over to the police. She then confessed that she and her other son depos­ited the corpse in the soakaway at night af­ter the boy had died,” he said The Point ob­served that the family house occupied by the Adekunles had been deserted and locked up since the incident.

Further findings by The Point revealed that the family had been ejected from the house by the commu­nity. It was learnt that the woman and her children were driven out of the house in the night by residents of the community with the aid of the dreaded ‘Oro’ cult group, who were said to have per­formed certain ritu­als.

Meanwhile, police officers attached to Alagolo Police Sta­tion in the Baruwa community have been accused of allegedly conniving with some community leaders to sweep the alleged crime under the car­pet.

A resident, who pleaded anonymity, said, “The police later handed off the case after they had been given certain amount of money.

“They actually did it to save the commu­nity from the wrath of the law, and that is why they decided to release the corpse to them as well as the woman and her other son.” But the Lagos Police Public Rela­tions Officer, Dolapo Badmos, said her of­fice had already been informed about the case and investiga­tions had commenced on it.

“Already my office is aware of the case, but I will confirm it further while our in­vestigation is ongo­ing,” Badmos told the online medium.