By Bose Adelaja
If Taiwo Akande had known, he would not have asked  his aged mother to travel from Ijero-Ekiti, Ekiti State, to receive medical treatment in Lagos State. The move to cater for his mother in her old age  is now being regretted by the entire family as a group of hoodlums recently sent the grand-mother to her  grave.

The victim, Mrs Akande, popularly called Mama Ibeji, had been on sick bed since January 2012 and was brought to Lagos by her son, to receive adequate care since Ijero and Lagos are miles apart, and her son did not want to risk travelling all the time to see the mother in the village.

The son brought the mother to his rented abode in Lagos which he occupied with his nuclear family.

Three months after she started the medical treatment, the woman, in her 70s,  was said to be recuperating and was trusting God to go back to the village when the unexpected happened; she was hacked  to death.

*Mama Ibeji (carrying her grand son) with a relation

The incident happened  when a group of hoodlums invaded Agunfoye/Ido-Orogbo, a sleepy community in Igbogbo-Bayeku area of Lagos State.

Scores of people were injured, including a pregnant woman, Mrs Mulikat Olaoni. Mama Ibeji was attacked  by the hoodlums; she gave up the ghost the following day after losing too much blood. Besides,  the house was partially demolished by the hoodlums and this has rendered the family homeless.

On that fateful day, Mama Ibeji had taken her medication and was having a nap on the couch; her daughter-in law, a nursing mother, Kemi,  also cooking with her baby strapped to her back while her two other  children were playing outside awaiting their father’s return  from work.

Suddenly, they heard a noise. Kemi, in company of other tenants, rushed outside to see what was happening only to be confronted by some hefty looking men who had already positioned a bulldozer in front of the house. That was when it dawned on them that some structures in the entire community had been demolished by the hoodlums who pounced on the tenants and chased them out of the house before they embarked on room-to-room raid.

It was in the process of the raid that the hoodlums met the septuagenarian woman  and hacked her, leaving her in the pool of her own blood.

When the daughter-in-law and other sympathisers managed to return to the house, they rushed the victim  to a nearby hospital, but this was rather too late; she died the following day and her corpse deposited at the mogue. The hoodlums went ahead to partially demolish the house.

The bereaved son was not at home when Sunday Vanguard visited the displaced family, but the daughter-in-law gave a blow-by-blow account of the incident. ‘’Time was 6p.m. that fateful day. I was in the house with my co-tenants when the hoodlums came calling. They came with stones, broken bottles and machetes and all of us were chased away except Mama who was sleeping in the living room.

On  entering the house, they found Mama sleeping on the couch. Immediately, they beat her  up and dealt machets blows on  her, and she was left in a pool of blood.

“The exercise took about three hours and Mama was almost  dead before help could come. However, we were able to rush her to hospital but she had lost so much blood; she died the following day.

“What kind of life is this? How can hoodlums take over the entire community when we have government?”