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.
