Bakare Moyosore and Monsur Oduola have been dating for almost three years. like every romantic relationship where both parties have shown undying love for one another, taking things a notch higher by tying the nuptial knot is always top on their scale of preference. This is exactly what Moyosore and Monsur had set out to achieve — to solidify their beautiful relationship with a marriage — when the horde of Northern miscreants killed him in his prime along with his dream of joyful matrimony.
On Sunday March 6, Monsur left ejigbo area of Lagos where he was staying with Moyosore, his fiancee, for Badagry where the parents of his fiancee are staying to meet them and ask for the hand of their daughter in marriage and also pick a data for such occasion. The meeting went according to plan and he, alongside his friend whom they had gone together, left the place of his soon-to-be in-laws in one piece and as fit as a fiddle to embark on the relatively long journey back to his base in ejigbo.
Monsur did not go to Moyosore’s parents’ with his car due to to deplorable state of Badagry and his own scant knowledge of the road leading to Badagry — a town in Lagos that shares border with other west African countries.
Going with his own car would have slowed things down for him, he reckoned. Using one of the ubiquitous commercial motorcycles which, in that part of the state, are ridden by illiterate men of Northern extraction made sense to him.
Going to his in-laws’ was a smooth sail, trouble began on his way back and the events that characterised the trouble later culminated in chain of occurrence that robbed him of his life.
“they killed him because of the gold accessories he was wearing, the bike man, a Hausa, created the situation to rob him of his gold neck chain, bracelet and ring, the whole thing was orchestrated” Monsur fiancée, Moyosore told WITHIN NIGERIA. “The rider knew my husband was not familiar with the road net work, so in order to carry out his nefarious objectives he decided to take a route that’s notorious for traffic congestion and other social vices” .
“when they encountered the traffic like the bike man had envisaged — but his plans were unbeknownst to my fiance and his friend — Monsur came down and trekked some distance to see what the cause of the traffic was, but when he came back he didn’t meet his friend and the bike man at the spot he left them, my fiance friend had helped the Okada man to carry the bike to the other side of the road which is way and also had smooth vehicular activity. Perplexed by the situation, Monsur called his friends phone to find out why they were no longer at the spot he left them, his friend explained what happened to him and crossed to the other side of the road to catch up with them” Moyosore narrated.
The allure of gold and phone.
From this point on, the bike man who had clear objectives of what he wanted to achieve and how he wanted to achieve it started creating issues where there should ordinarily not be one. It started with a flimsy allegation against Monsur of not helping him to lift his bike to the traffic-free lane and that only his friend was kind enough to assist him. “he started harping on my fiance refusal to him with lifting his bike over the concrete median that divides the lane, and he tried to explain to him that he had gone to the front to see what the cause of the traffic was and if they can exercise some patience instead of taking one-way, but the bike man was having none of it” a grief-stricken Moyosore told within naija “Bikeman didn’t stop even after my husband explanation, he started hurling insults and invectives at him. His aim was to rile Oduola up to react aggressively and he achieved his aim”
What started as mild altercation turned into a full blown melee
Miffed by the unjustifiable incessant verbal assault on his person by the Bikeman, Monsur ordered him to stop the bike, he disembarked and confronted the bike man, this did not stop the bike man from making his deeply inciteful and derogatory remarks. “Monsur felt he had had enough and decided to go physical with the bike man, he slightly punched the bike man on the mouth, that was exactly what the bike man was looking for — to rile him up enough to do something he would use to justify his goal all long. He was wearing a golden ring which aggravated the effect of the punch that saw the bike man suffer a gash on his lips. Little did Monsur know that he was in an area populated and dominated by bike men of Northern extraction, no sooner had he punched the bike man than his fellow bike man, as if on cue, started appearing at the scene of the incident. Upon finding out what happened, his colleagues constituted themselves into an arbiter of some sort and they averred that the best way to settle the dispute was to have the bike man punch my fiance back in the face like he did him.
“Sensing that he was in danger, he allowed them have their way by kowtowing to their insane demand, the bike man punched him but his colleagues were not satisfying with the effects of the punch as monsur did not get cut like the bike man, and they ordered the bike man to punch him again, still not convinced, they asked the bike man to punch him the third time. It was at this point monsur protested and pointed out that they were being biased. The bike man stopped punching him and there was respite for monsur. They decided to continue their journey but bike man said he would no longer take them to where they are headed and he will still collect the amount he charged them, which is 3500. This did not go down well with Monsur as he felt short-changed, insisting that he would not pay such amount but he would pay the amount that’s right for the distance the bike man had covered, which the bike man outrightly refused. His friend, however, prevailed on him to let him pay. Low on cash, his friend crossed back to the other side of the road, to withdraw cash from the point of sale (POS) machine operator, after finishing the transaction he returned to the spot he left monsur but he was there. He was petrified. Another bikeman who witnessed the whole melee called him aside and told him to leave the area immediately as his safety can no longer be guaranteed. He asked the bike man if he saw his friend. The bike man said he saw a mob chasing who was likely to be his friend”
Flummoxed and disenchanted, he set out to uncover the whereabouts of monsur, but a stern warning from the bikeman stopped his mission in its tracks, the bike man advised him to get to safety first that if the mob who were after his friend saw him, they would attack him. The bike man took him to ejigbo where he went straight to Moyosore to tell him what had happened. The next day, which was on Monday, Moyosore and and his fiance friend with a handful of family and friends returned to Alabarago along lasu road where monsur was dastardly murdered to search for him. The search began early in the morning and in order to achieve the purpose of their mission, they decided not to take any means of transportation, rather the search was done on foot. They trekked from lasu to alabarago. Searching every nooks and crannies, every alley, every corner and dirt-clogged drainage along the way, but didn’t find Monsur.
After a futile search, they went to the home of Séríkí in that area, and he took them to a private makeshift cell where he keeps petty criminals and social miscreants, but Monsur was not among the detained persons. Before going to the seriki’s, Moyosore said they had gone to the Ojoo police station to report a case of a missing person but the the Ojoo division of the Nigerian police force said Alabarago was no under their purview and that whatever happened there was not within their jurisdiction. The seriki, however, enjoined them to go to the PPL police station. They found the lifeless body of Monsur lying by the roadside, stripped of all the valuable accessories and gadgets he had on him.
“We returned to ojoo police station to inform them that we had found his dead body. Got an ambulance to take his body to the morgue from where we proceeded to bury him. After his burial we continued our push for justice, the police at ojoo police station asked us to bring the pack of Monsur phone so that they can use the details to track his phone. While this was ongoing my fiancé’s parent went back to the police station to tell the officers that they had a suspect, which is my fiancé’s friend who had followed him to my parents place” Moyosore said “It was after this move by Monsur’s parent that ojoo police station halted their own investigation and transferred the case to Panti criminal investigation department who then arrested Monsur’s friend for alleged homicide. I was stunned by the of my fiancé’s parent to get his friend arrested because he had followed him to my parents’ to seek my hand in marriage”
Moyosore said she later went to Panti with his Dad to protest the innocence of Monsur’s friend and the officers in charge of the case told her that they knew he was innocent. The officers then asked Moyosore and his dad to pay them a hundred thousand naira to aid their investigation, part of which would require going to the scene of the incident and the spot Monsur was killed. She said they paid the police fifty thousand naira but did not hear anything about the case afterwards.
Moyosore also disclosed that she got wind of how the Seriki tried to alter the sequence of events and what actually transpired. She said she was informed of how the seriki had later gone to the police station to tell them that her fiance was killed while trying to steal a motorcycle, a narrative that’s completely different from what actually happened and how it did happen.