On November
20, 2014, every parent’s nightmare became a reality for 42-year-old Ayedun
Shitta-Bello. It was a normal Saturday. There was nothing out of the ordinary
that morning that could foretell the tragic news she was about to hear.
“I did
not even have a nightmare or a bad dream that could make me think that such a
terrible thing had happened,” she told our correspondent.
Barely
out of bed that Saturday morning, Shitta-Bello got a call from her brother,
Prince Musaliu Buhari.
“Come
quick, please, don’t ask why, just come,” she was told on the phone.
Shitta-Bello said apprehension
set in as she tried to understand what could have warranted such an early
summon.
Our correspondent met Shitta-Bello at Badore area of Ajah, Lagos, on Wednesday
where she spoke of the agony of the last two months since she learnt that her
sons, Abiodun and Ayinde Oniru (23 and 20 respectively), had died.
The fair complexioned woman,
could not hide her agony during the interview as she kept asking, “Why? Why?
Why would anybody kill my sons? To punish me or what?”
Shitta-Bello and her sons’ father
had parted ways since Abiodun and Ayinde were little but they lived with their
father who had converted from Islam to Christianity.
Saturday Punch learnt that the
deceased attended a white garment church pastored by one Samuel Olusoji. with
their father and step mother.
Two days
before the incident (November 18), Abiodun and Ayinde along with their father
and step mother were said to have gone to church for a programme. The church is
located at 739, Ori-Oke Ibukun, Ilasan Street, Jakande, Ajah.
Shitta-Bello’s ex-husband and father of the deceased told the police that he
left the church earlier having performed his own bath but left behind his
children and wife in the church.
According to the statement he gave to the police, early morning on Saturday, he
got a call from his wife who told him that his two children had drowned during
a spiritual bath in a stream frequently used by the church along Ogombo area of
Ajah.
The
father of the deceased called his ex-wife’s brother (Buhari), who raced to the
scene in shock and saw his nephews’ dead bodies lying on the ground.
Screaming inside but trying not to sound alarming, Buhari dialled his sister’s
phone line and told her to come to her ex-husband’s house right away without
giving reasons.
She said,
“I just
woke up when I received the call. I quickly put on clothes and went there. I
got there and realised that relations were there as well. I became suspicious.
“I asked what had happened but no one told me anything initially. I then asked
for my children. That was when they told me they drowned during a spiritual
bath. From then on, everything they told me made no sense. The more I thought
about it, the more it did not add up.”
The church pastor initially fled
while the police arrested the assistant pastor of the church.
According to Shitta-Bello, she was told during investigation by the police that
almost 100 other people were present during the ‘spiritual bath’.
“How can
two people drown during a spiritual bath and they turn out to be siblings? How
can anybody expect me to believe that was a coincidence?” she said.
The
grieving mother said sleep had eluded her since the incident as she always
stayed up in the middle of the night to think about her precious children.
Shitta-Bello has another child from the man she remarried but lamented that the
hope that her two late children would meet their young sibling would not be
fulfilled.
She said,
“I
called my children around 7pm on Friday, the day before the incident and they
told me they were in church for a programme.
“Few days before then when I visited them at their father’s house, they did not
even want me to leave. But I promised to come back soon and bring their sister
along because they had not met her before.
“My children had become a source of joy to me. But they died mysteriously just
at the moment they were of age to fulfil their responsibility to me as a
parent.
“I am not saying this because I am grieving but no one can tell me anything
that will make me believe that they died just by drowning. How could they both
drown when people were there and nobody went in to help? I was told Ayinde went
into the water first and his brother went in to rescue him and they both
drowned.”
Saturday
PUNCH learnt that the deceased were scheduled to travel out of the country in a
few days that same November and had even packed their bags.
The bodies of the deceased are still lying in the mortuary at the Lagos State
University Teaching Hospital as investigation into the case continues.
Buhari, the deceased’s uncle, told our correspondent that he believed that
there was more to the story of the drowning as well.
“The
police are still conducting investigations. That is why the bodies are still in
the mortuary. We will know what happened when the result of the autopsy
conducted on the bodies comes out,” he said.
The Police Public Relations
Officer in the state, Mr. Kenneth Nwosu, said investigation into the case is
still ongoing at the Department of Criminal Investigations.
“The
pastor of the church was tracked down and arrested shortly after the incident
last year,” he said.
