Murdered (6)
The young lady got the N80,000 per annum one-room self contained apartment on December 27, 2010 and by January 13, 2011, she was found dead in her kitchen.
Unfortunately, no one knows anything about her, apart from the fact that she worked at Halogen Security, a security outfit in Lagos, before her demise...
Even Peter Odie, the man who stood as her guarantor when she was to be employed, said that he knew very little about Okoli.
Odie told the police that he met Okoli at the Alpha Beach in Ajah area of Lagos State. According to him, the late girl used to sell food at the beach and she was quite friendly. This, Odie said, endeared her to everyone.
He said, "She was actually selling food at the Alpha Beach and was polite to everyone. I was one of her regular customers and that was the relationship I had with her."
Odie added that sometime last year, Okoli brought a guarantor form to him. He said, "I remember that she brought the form to me around June 2010. Before then, I noticed that she had stopped coming to sell food at the beach. So, when she came with the form, she told me that she had gotten a job and I signed it for her, only for me to hear that she has been murdered in her room a few weeks ago."
Everyone living in the house where the murder took place claimed that they knew little about her, and that they also did not know how she died.
One of the tenants, Rosemary Ugorji, however said that she heard strange voices emanating from Okoli's room around 2a.m on January 10.
Ugorji, who is pregnant, said that she heard the deceased shouting in Igbo language that she wanted to be left alone. She said, "I heard Chinyere screaming in her room in the middle of the night. I was very scared because I was the only one in the house. My husband had travelled to Edo State and I could not come out alone. In the morning, I called my husband and told him what happened. I also told him that the electricity cable had developed a fault and he asked me to call the electrician."
It was gathered that while the electrician was trying to fix the electricity from the roof of the house, he told Ugorji that he saw traces of blood on the window and door of the late lady's apartment.
Ugorji said, "When my husband returned, I told him what the electrician said and we went to tell the owner of the house. The landlord listened to us and we went back to our apartment."
Two days later, the company that Okoli worked for sent someone to come and check on her because, the messenger said, she had not reported for work for two days. After knocking on Okoli's door which was locked from the inside, the member of staff decided to ask the neighbours.
After the enquiry from Okoli's colleague, they all went to meet the landlord before going to lodge a case of missing person at the police station. They, however, told the police that they suspected that something was amiss because of the unpleasant odour that was emanating from Okoli's room.
When the policemen from Langbasa Police Station got to the house, they forcefully opened the door and found Okoli's corpse in the kitchen, with blood stains everywhere.
SUNDAY PUNCH learnt that her assailant locked the door and went away with the key to the apartment. The Public Relations Officer of the Lagos State Police Command, Mr. Frank Mba, said that the police were working with the theory that the person that murdered Okoli was known to her.
He said, "First, that house is not a place that someone who is not familiar with the environment can just go to because it is located in a swampy area and there is bush behind it. Also, there was no sign of forceful entry into the apartment and this is an indication that the deceased let in whoever it was by herself.
"The neighbours heard her shout around 2a.m.; you can't be with a stranger at that time of the night in your house. All this makes us suspect she knew her murderer very well and the person knew her too."
While homicide detectives battle to establish the probable motive for the murder, the disappearance of Okolie's phone gives them more grounds to worry about the nature of her death.
Mba said, "To compound matters, the person that killed her took her phone too. Luckily, we got her number and we have written to the telecommunications provider to furnish us with the details of all calls made to and received on her phone.
"We hope to receive a response from them very soon and I strongly believe that it will lead us to the person that killed her because she must have called the person that day or, maybe they exchanged text messages and this made the murderer to take the phone with him."
Meanwhile, the police are yet to contact any of her relations because she lived alone and her phone that would have been used to contact her family members can't be found.
Jos — Dr.Osaretin Osagie, a medical doctor with the Jos University Teaching Hospital, JUTH, was on Wednesday brutally murdered at his residence in Rayfield, Jos, the Plateau State capital by unknown assailants.
we gathered that the deceased, who heard strange movements at his residence around 7.10 p.m, and went out to check around the house, was attacked by the assailants who kept hitting him with various weapons until he bled profusely and laid unconscious. At the time of filing in this report, the Police Public Relations Officer, Mohammed Lerama said that the Police command was not aware and had not received such a report.
However, Dr. Christopher Piwuna, the National Vice President of the Nigerian Medical Association, confirmed the incident, saying doctors in Nigeria had become targets who were murdered and kidnapped for ransoms.
"The brutal murder of Dr. Osagie has raised a lot of eyebrows and cannot just be dismissed as a coincidence; so, we are calling on the authorities to look into the matter as a matter of urgency, so that the culprits of this inhuman act would face the wrath of the law"..
Eighty-seven year-old Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) woman leader in the defunct Bendel State and mother of an Edo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Madam Grace Osaretin, was murdered, Tuesday night in Benin City.
This came just as the Edo State PDP chairman, Chief Dan Orbih called on the state governor, Adams Oshiomhole, to convey a security summit to address what he described as the increasing insecurity in the state.
Nigerian Tribune learnt on Wednesday, at the Benin City residence of Mr. Martin Osakue, the PDP chieftain and proprietor of Benin-City based Paragon Group of Schools that Madam Osaretin, his mother, was killed around 8 p.m on Tuesday.
The gunmen reportedly entered the deceased’s residence at Uwasota, a suburb of Benin City and enquired from the woman if she was the mother of Mr. Osakue.
When the woman answered in the affirmative, the yet-to-be identified gunmen were said to have shot her many times before leaving the house..
Mr. Osakue confirmed the development when the state PDP chairman and some of the state PDP leaders paid him a condolence visit and said even when no conclusions had been drawn yet, he wondered why some armed people would enter his mother’s house and killed her after she responded to their enquiry that she was his mother.
Chief Orbih, who advocated the conveyance of a security summit for all political parties and stakeholders in the state at a rally on Wednesday, in Ekpoma, where Chief Don Ehijiator, former Chief of Staff to Governor Oshiomhole and hundreds of his supporters defected to the PDP from the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) challenged security agencies to swing into action with a view to fishing out the killers of Madam Osaretin.
According to Orbih, the killing was a reflection of the level of insecurity in the state, which he claimed had long being compromised, adding that “Apart from total breakdown of law and order, there is breakdown of governance.”
The PDP chairman said this was the time to reject the ACN led government in Edo, pointing out that people were frustrated with the bad state of affairs brought about by the ACN administration.
A day of love and sharing turned tragic yesterday as a former reporter with African Independent Television (AIT) , Mr. Efenji Efenji, was hacked to death by suspected assailants.
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The tragic event happened at a popular outdoor joint: Corteland Garden and Bar, Karu, an outskirt of Federal Capital Territory, FCT, when a group of about 15 machete and axe-wielding youths attacked him and leaving him to bleed to death.
Efenji's relative, simply known as Innocent , alongside his wife and their nine-month-old baby boy as well as his own wife and baby had gone out in the spirit of the day to relax and share moments together.
Innocent disclosed that at a time in the garden, the whole place became rowdy with bottles being broken by some youths and they had to relocate to somewhere else in the area.
He said no sooner had they relocated to a corner in the garden before they found out that the deceased was not with them.
He said frantic efforts were quickly made to locate his whereabouts, but later saw him being cudgeled and cutlassed by over 15 hoodlums.
Innocent said he attacked the armed youths but was floored while the late Efenji was calling on him not to allow them kill him.
A visibly pained and angry Innocent said it was when he was down that the police arrived and arrested him despite his protestations that he was a relative of somebody that was attacked and that the police should accompany him to look for the whereabouts’ of the mortally wounded Efenji.
Despite his appeals, Innocent lamented that police did not heed as he was bundled off together with the manager of the Corteland Garden to the Karu Divisional Police Station at about 11: 00pm.
“I am angry with the police. Perhaps my brother Efenji would still be alive today if they had listened to me. No! They just hurled me into their van, removed my belt and locked me up. What sort of police do we have?, ” he asked rhetorically.
According to him, he later learnt that Efenji had scaled the barbed wire behind the garden despite being bloodied and collapsed a few meters from the Karu market apparently from loss of blood where his body was later found at about 4: 00 am upon a call from family members that were frantically looking for him.
When THISDAY visited the Corteland Garden, blood stains were on a trail leading to where the late journalist managed to scale the barbed wire fence to escape his assailants.
All attempts to get workers at the garden to comment on the tragic occurrence of February 14 proved abortive as none of them was willing to provide an insight to what happened that fateful night.
At the Karu Police station, the Area Commander of Abuja Metro, Mr. Sunday Odukoya who rushed ro the police station when he heard the unfortunate incident, said the police would brief the press when they have concluded investigation into the matter, disclosing that the manager of the garden and two suspects have been taken into custody.
