TheCable

Dubai may hold stunning attraction for many people, but for some Nigerians, the beautiful city is fast becoming a death pit that should be avoided like a plague. Two young Nigerians have died in controversial circumstances in the city this year, and there is a possibility that a few more deaths have gone unnoticed.

Recently, the death of Oloruntoba Falode, the 19-year-old son of celebrated sports journalist, Aisha Falode, was roundly reported by the Nigerian media. And following the uncanny circumstances in which Toba died, Festus Keyamo, a Lagos lawyer, had implored the minister of foreign affairs, Aminu Bashir Wali, to intervene in what soon began to look like a murder case.

According to Keyamo, Tyler Fray, as the deceased was fondly called, was murdered by the jealous boyfriend of a British woman on the claim that the deceased was having an affair with her.

In a breathing letter, he stated that Toba, admitted to study Audio Production at SAE Institute, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, lived on the 17th floor of Manchester Towers, Marina, Dubai, from where he was reportedly pushed off the balcony.

“In the wee hours of February 15, 2014, Mrs Aisha Falode, Toba’s mother, received a call from a security guard at her son’s apartment block informing her that something bad had happened to him. She called her son’s friend, Nick Allison, South African, who informed her that Oloruntoba had died falling off his balcony,” he explained.

Aisa Falode (middle)… agony of a mother

Four days after the avoidable tragedy, the Falode family travelled to Dubai to bring back the remains of their late son. They met with the director of Jebel Ali Police Station who read to them a report from an investigation into the cause of Toba’s death.

The police director claimed that there were five people (four boys and a girl) – a Nigerian, a South African, a French-Canadian, a Saudi Arabian and a Briton – at the scene of Toba’s death. He also claimed that Toba, who had gone to a club with friends Ebele Oladeji Onwugbufor, Nick Allison and Joachim Santene was drunk when he returned to his apartment.

Toba was said to be at the balcony with his feet off the floor and swinging forwards and backwards, with his girlfriend Olivia Melanie Richards Evans warning him to be careful.

“Soon after Miss Evans left the balcony, ‘they’ all noticed that the deceased was not there. His friends all rushed down and found him lying dead in front of the apartment block”, the Jebel Ali police station director claimed.

However, an obverse account was given by the friends of Toba who were at the scene of the incident.

They alleged that there Toba and one of his friends, Faisal AldakMary Al-Nasser, a Saudi Arabian, had been having occasional rifts over Melanie Evans, whom the deceased repeatedly denied having an affair with.

According to the account, after spending some time at a club, M Deck, Media1Hotel, Media City, Dubai, Toba and his three friends met Al-Nasser and Evans, who were at the same club initially but left earlier for his apartment. The two of them waited for Toba to return. When he returned, Al-Nasser asked for a meeting with the late Nigerian. The aim of the meeting was to “sort things out”.

The trio were in the room at first but later headed for the balcony, while Toba’s friends stayed put. Shortly afterwards, there was a verbal confrontation among the three. One of Toba’s friends, Deji, opened the curtains and looked through. He obviously did not intervene. And shortly after, he closed the curtains, Al-Nasser with blood splattered on his shirt and Evans came into the room unfazed to inform them that Toba had fallen off the balcony. Al-Nasser was reported to have repeatedly said he would only spend 25 years in jail.

In addition, late Toba’s friends confessed that they found his body about 15 meters away from the building, indicating that he might have been pushed off the balcony. In the police report, the murder suspects, Al-Nasser and Evans, were not mentioned to be at the balcony when Toba fell off, which showed police complicity in the case.

Calls for a probe into Toba’s killers soon began gathering momentum. And in May, Aminu Tambuwal, speaker of the federal house of representatives, told the outgoing ambassador of the UAE to Nigeria, Rasheed Aldhaheri, to ensure his country finds the killers.

Sadly, eight months after his death, Toba’s killers have not been identified and the gaping holes in police explanation of his ‘accidental’ death still remain unexplained.

Oyamuyefa… suicide or murder?

Now, on Monday, Oyamuyefa, son of former governor of Bayelsa state, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, was reported to have committed suicide. Circumstances of the death are still fuzzy. But if anyone would commit suicide, it is unlikely to be the son of a convicted ex-governor so powerful that the president of his country woke up one day and gifted him presidential pardon! Whatever challenge the young man was grappling with, it would seem he had the world at his feet, and his family had everything to pull him out of it.

So, what did the police in Dubai say this time? They found Oyamuyefa’s corpse on the street, searched his body, found his Identity card and traced his home. They, reportedly, did not say at the time how he died. But on discovering — at the house, of course — that they were dealing with the corpse of a powerful former Nigerian governor, they returned to the house to say an autopsy had been conducted and it showed that the young man committed suicide.

Already, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and his household have dismissed this suicide talk. On receiving the news, Alams and his first son, Tonbra, boarded the next possible flight to Dubai, where they are currently attempting to unravel how Oyamuyefa either ‘murdered himself’ or was murdered.

Back home, President Goodluck Jonathan, who was once Alamieyeseigha’s subordinate (as deputy governor) in Bayelsa, has promised “full support of the federal government” to the bereaved family in unravelling the mysterious death.

Anyone who knows how Jonathan weathered the backlash that followed Alamieyeseigha’s state pardon knows what the president meant: “I will use all my constitutional and non-constitutional powers as president of Nigeria to find out who dared kill your son”.

Too bad it had to wait till this time. But the tragic death of Oyamuyefa will set the template for answers to that nagging question of what has been killing Nigerians in Dubai.