By Demola Akinyemi

The academic community of University of Ilorin, in Kwara State, has been thrown into mourning over the suicide of one of its students, Hameedat Sanni, yesterday morning, after falling victim to a scammer.

The late Hameedat, who resided in Rubik, a private hostel within the University environment, was said to have lent a male friend she met on Snapchat (a social media platform) N500,000.

Vanguard gathered that the male friend was said to have lured Hameedat to lend her the money, on the pretext that he urgently needed the amount to treat his mother of breast cancer in the hospital, promising to repay the money.

Findings revealed that the N500,000 she lent to the male friend was part of the N1 million her mother reportedly kept in her account.

Vanguard, however, learnt that immediately Hameedat transferred the amount to him, he blocked all her contacts, forcing her into heavy depression, after realising that that she had been duped.

It was while her innocent mother reportedly demanded for the money that she eventually poisoned herself to death, yesterday.

Reacting, the management of UNILORIN expressed shock over her death, describing it “as a most horrible way to die.”

A statement by Director of Information, Kunle Akogun, reads “The management of the University of Ilorin has received with sadness the death of one of the University students, Sanni Hameedat, by suicide allegedly over a failed financial transaction.

“A statement by the University’s Director of Corporate Affairs, Mr Kunle Akogun, on behalf of the management, described the incident as “a most horrible way to die, especially for a promising young lady who had every opportunity before her to make it big in life.

“Mr Akogun expressed the University management’s sympathy with the parents, siblings, friends and colleagues of the deceased and prayed that God gives them the fortitude to bear the loss.
“The management then counselled the students of the University to be wary of the company they keep in order not to fall into the traps of scammers.

“The University of Ilorin is reputed to be a bastion of moral and academic education and we are surprised that any of our students, upon all the moral and academic instructions inculcated in them, could have associated with such undesirable element of a supposed boy friend, and even went ahead to take the extreme step of taking her own life”, the University management lamented.