…Alleges wife disallowed the deceased from naming their triplets

By Boluwaji Obahopo, Lokoja

Mr. Edward Kehinde Soje may not have come from a rich family but he was not a stranger to comfort. His father was said to have retired from the police as Deputy Commissioner. Some of his extended family members in Ogori community of Ogori/Mangogo local government area of Kogi State were also said to be top politicians.

Cornelius Soje … My brother died brokenhearted

Soje, a Director in Kogi State Civil Service, committed suicide by hanging himself on a tree at the Mammy Side of the Army Barracks in Lokoja, the state capital. His dangling body was said to have been found by a farmer who alerted the personnel at the Nigeria Army Command Record.

The 54-year-old apparently took his life barely nine days after his wife of 17 years gave birth to a set of male triplets in a private hospital in Abuja through IVF. The couple had been childless before then. He was on Grade Level 16 in the Kogi State Teaching Service Commission and owed 11 months’ salary as of the time of the apparent suicide.

He had, before killing himself, travelled to Abuja and left a suicide note for the wife who works in one of the federal ministries. Read the suicide note, “Psalm 121:3: God will not suffer your foot to be moved: He that keepeth you will not slumber. Amen. You and the three boys, the God Almighty will keep you and prosper you. Amen. I love you”.

Kogi State Police Command Public Relations Officer, ASP William Aya, who confirmed the  suicide, said the dangling body of Soje was found on a tree behind the barracks at about 5:55 pm on October 16.

Family sources said the deceased Director had been going through financial pressure due to the non-payment of his salary. He was among thousands of civil servants in Kogi being owed between two and 21 months’ salary. As a way out, he was said to have sold his only car and a three-bedroom bungalow he was building at Otokiti area of Lokoja.

The building, allegedly at lintel level, was said to have been sold by Soje at a giveaway price of N1.5 million in April to meet urgent family needs. According to the sources, his financial woes became compounded when the wife gave birth to triplets through Caesarian Section in a private hospital in Abuja on October 7. The deceased remained in the hospital to look after wife and children until October 13, a day before the naming ceremony when he decided to come back to Lokoja.

On getting to Lokoja, Soje allegedly went to his bank to collect the remaining N30, 000 in his account and thereafter informed the bank in writing about his decision to close the account. He then rejoined his wife and handed over the N30, 000 cash to her. On October 14, Soje and wife were joined by two pastors and some relatives to perform a brief naming ceremony for the triplets in the hospital.

He later left the hospital on the pretext that he wanted to pick few things from the wife’s apartment in Abuja with a promise to come back quickly. But the deceased did not return for hours and did not pick calls made to his telephone line, a development which forced the wife to send somebody to the house to ascertain what was happening to him.

The person, on getting to the apartment, knocked the door severally but no response and decided to call his telephone number. On hearing the telephone ringing out from the apartment, the person was said to have knocked severally again but no response. This made him to seek the assistance of neighbours to force the door open. When the door was opened, the people were shocked when they saw Soje’s telephone handset placed on a suicide note on the centre table in the sitting room while he was nowhere to be found. When the wife was informed, she quickly contacted some people to begin a search for him in Abuja while relations and friends in Lokoja were also informed of the development.

Efforts made to locate him did not yield fruit until relations decided to visit hospitals in Lokoja. The decision paid off eventually on Friday, October 20 when the corpse of Soje was found in the morgue of the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja.

A member of the family said that the management of the hospital explained to them that Soje’s corpse was brought in by the police, who found it dangling on a tree. He described the late Soje as a “very quiet and lovable human being.

Governor Yahaya Bello had only a week earlier denied owing civil servants more than two months’ salary. Soje’s development changed the narrative.

‘We owed him nine months’ salary, not 11’

In an attempt to wash its hand off the suicide, the Kogi government said it only owed Soje nine months’ salary and not eleven months as alleged. The state’s Head of Service, HoS, Mrs Deborah Ogunmola, said in a statement that the deceased received salary up till December 2016 when it was stopped. “His pay was stopped after proof emerged that he falsified his age records. His confession to the offence is on video to justify government stoppage of his salary.”

Ogunmola explained that the disciplinary action against Soje and other certain categories of offenders were then commuted. “Pardoned members of staff were processed for reinstatement and payment in batches.

Mr. Soje was in the September batch and he was aware of this fact. The Kogi State Teaching Service Commission, where he worked, has forwarded a template for payment to government and Mr. Soje was aware that he was listed to receive six months backlog.” According to her, this leaves only two months (August and September) outstanding.

Ogunmola, who also hails from Ogori, same town as Soje, said government was saddened by the Director’s death. She described Soje as a Level 16 Officer and faulted media reports attributing Soje’s alleged decision to commit suicide to non-payment of salary.

Meanwhile, the government’s age falsification claim was dismissed by Soje’s cousin, Mr. Theophilous Soje, who spoke to Sunday Vanguard at their Ogori country home.

According to Theophilus, he and the deceased were born in 1963 and only 16 days separated them.

Stroke

The Soje story took a twist when the police alleged that the deceased suffered from partial stroke before he committed suicide.

Spokesperson for the police in Kogi State, ASP William Aya, told journalists that Soje had partial stroke and hence the need for the autopsy. Aya also disclosed that the police were yet to be in possession of the suicide note allegedly written by Soje before committing suicide.

A family source confirmed that Soje indeed suffered the ailment in 2008 but was completely healed. The source said the late Director had been driving, cooking and carrying out many other activities a person down with stroke wouldn’t have been able to do after he was healed of the ailment. He also queried how someone who had stroke could hang himself.

‘No more suicides please’

In a reaction to the suicide, the state Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has appealed to its members not to see suicide as a way out of the current hardship imposed on them as a result of non-payment of their salaries. The state Chairman of the NLC, Mr Onu Edoka, warned workers against taking extreme actions, saying tough time would soon be over.

Edoka also said many workers and pensioners had died due to the non-payment of their salary and pensions by the state government while some workers in the state equally had their ailments aggravated as a result of lack of money. He said that high blood pressure and diabetes had become common among them.

Finger pointing

In a related development, the immediate younger brother of the deceased, Mr Cornelius Soje, said the Director’s wife’s action may have pushed him to suicide. Cornelius alleged that the woman turned his brother to her puppet.

According to him, unknown to many people, his late brother and his wife actually had a child three years into their marriage who died eight days after birth. Thereafter, he said the wife suffered multiple miscarriages.

The brother narrated that when some years ago the wife was transferred to Abuja from Lokoja, the development caused trouble in their relationship. He said his brother always narrated his family troubles to him.

Cornelius, however, said that after some time, the deceased stopped complaining to him and he thought the troubles had been resolved until he announced the birth of the triplets.

“My late brother called me on the phone and expressed to me that he was disallowed from naming the kids. It was the wife who gave the kids names. My late brother was not permitted to give them names. The wife did”, he alleged.

“My brother called me on the phone and told me that his wife said he was not the father of the triplets. My brother thought it was a joke until the woman stressed it to him by asking, ‘How can you think you are the owners of the babies?’

“My brother said he could not forget the statement and was seriously distressed by it. I told him not to take his wife’s statement serious but view it as a woman’s careless talk.”

Cornelius further quoted Soje as saying that immediately after the conversation took place, the wife asked him to go to her Abuja apartment to prepare food for her. “He left the hospital and that was the last time anybody saw my brother alive”, he said.

The brother claimed that from the Saturday when the deceased went missing, the wife did not notify any family member until the following Tuesday when she called his sibling, Mrs Alice Turkwo, in Ilorin.

“It was my sister in Ilorin who told me the wife called to say our brother was missing. When she did around 6pm on that Tuesday, I called her on phone but she kept telling me not to disturb her as she had migraine and needed to rest. Out of annoyance I ended the call. I tried to call her line later but, since then, she had put off her phone and none of us could reach her.

It was a friend who hinted us of a suicide story in town. We checked with the army and discovered it was actually our brother that was in the photograph taken before they invited the police to take over the case”, he narrated.

Cornelius dismissed the claim that it was financial depression that led his brother to commit suicide. His words, “The unpaid salary had nothing to do with his taking his life. My brother had been surviving without salary for months, why now?

He could survive without salary for two years. The house he sold at Zariagi was because he didn’t like the location and he had started using the proceeds to build another one around Phase Two, Lokoja.”

The brother said Soje sold a car three years ago because he had another one. He claimed that the deceased actually suffered stroke around 2008 but had been healed and was driving himself as well as carrying out other tasks for more than five years now.

Cornelius said the family was not interested in any autopsy by the police. Their interest, according to him, was to take possession of his sibling’s body and bury him quietly. He said they had accepted their fate but still viewed the triplets as theirs.

“Whether the claim by the wife, as reported to me by our late brother, that he was not the father of the triplets is true or not, the kids are innocent. And we are ready to take them as ours. And we’ll help them. My brother was a good man. We were the only two male children of our parents”, he added.