Who killed this man? •This is the poser the Police are battling to unravel

An eerie gloom pervaded the room where she reclined on a bed at Imayo area of Ado-Ekiti, the capital of Ekiti State. Misery and sorrow were written on her face. She looked forlorn and famished; her face sunken and disconsolate.

Her mien occasionally lapsed into joyless smiles that accentuated the emptiness that had suddenly taken over her life.

In the aftermath of a mortal attack on her husband and his eventual death, Mrs Funmilayo Anjorin cut the picture of a totally ruined woman.

A yet inexplicable death had abbreviated the woman’s 22-year-old marriage to Mr. Saka Anjorin, alias Morrow; a man for whom she had three children, dispatching her into the unenviable club of widows. She has been battling to come to terms with the cruel fate that befell her on a Sunday while she was yet worshipping in the church. Understandably, she has kept asking one question: who killed my husband and why?

The events of February 6, 2011 will remain in Funmilayo’s memory for long. She had woken up early to perform her routine household as a wife, after which she headed for the CAC Revival Centre, Oke Kosehunti, Agric Road, Ado-Ekiti.

Her 54-year-old husband and dry cleaner, Anjorin, was at this time busy praying in audible tones in the sitting room, so Funmilayo had no chance of bidding him goodbye when she left for church. Unknown to her, Anjorin’s death was only a few hours away.

Moments after his wife’s departure, one Akintayo, alias Okoro, came on a visit to Anjorin at his rented apartment at 16, Adua Lere Street, Ekute Quarters, Ado-Ekiti, where he stayed with his wife and children. Before Akintayo’s arrival, another friend called Apari (bald head) had come. According to Anjorin’s third child, all three talked on issues for some time before they decided to make a meal of pounded yam with egusi soup, which they ate together.

As further gathered from the 14-year-old child, not long after they finished eating, Apari left. Later, at about midday, his father and Akintayo went out together in a green coloured Toyota Liteace bus belonging to the latter. This turned out to be the last time the household would see their breadwinner alive. At about 11 pm, Akintayo reportedly brought home Anjorin’s body to the house of his aged father, Alfa Sule, at Imayo, Ado-Ekiti. Akintayo was said to have told Anjorin’s father that he met him in serious pains by the roadside around Ben Folarin College, Irona Street, in the state capital. He was said to have left almost immediately.

The following day, four of Anjorin’s maternal uncles, including Alfa Ganiyu Muhammed, went to report the incident at Odo-Ado Police Station in Ado-Ekiti, following which a detachment of policemen came to assess Anjorin’s corpse and joined in the evacuation of same to the mortuary of the University Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti, where efforts were being made to determine the actual cause of his death.

The Divisional Police Officer of the Odo-Ado Station confirmed the arrest of two suspects in connection with the death of Anjorin the following day. The two names were recorded in their case file as Akintayo and one Oba Gabriel. According to findings, Gabriel is a direct uncle of Akintayo, while the two are Anjorin’s paternal cousins. Akintayo’s statement at the police station confirmed that he was the one who took the corpse of his late friend to Sule’s house.

However, the maternal uncles of the deceased are embittered at the manner of the death of their kinsman. They would not accept that he died a natural death. They claimed to have smelt a foul play in Anjorin’s death, saying that they saw bruises all over his body. They also claimed that a side of his head was swollen. They concluded that the bruises and other telltale signs on him revealed a plot and an orchestration.

The Nation

Before he left the Alfa Ganiyu’s house, Oba was said to have cracked a proverb that if a goat was pursued to a dead end it would turn back and bite the pursuer. This has been interpreted by the deceased’s kinsmen to mean that Oba nursed some lethal grudges against Anjorin. Anjorin’s uncles recalled that a few weeks before he died, he had expressed fears about the way Oba took the land matter. He was said to have expressed fears for his life but the uncles did not believe him.

The questions on the lips of the deceased’s kinsmen are: where did he go with Akintayo in the latter’s vehicle on that Sunday? Where and when did Akintayo later meet and pick up his dying friend? Where was the pair of shoes purportedly worn by the deceased when they left home on that day? What encounter could have left Anjorin’s body heavily bruised and his head swollen? These remain the riddles the police will have to unravel.

’s investigations showed that one Oba, a paternal cousin of the deceased, had actually gone to the house of Alfa Ganiyu early on the fateful Sunday to lodge a bitter complaint that Saka had been peddling a rumour and smearing his name, saying that he (Oba) sold his father’s land at Ita Oro and also reported him to one Prof. Olomola. Oba was reported to have added that the parcel of land Saka was talking about belonged not only to his father but to some other people.