For the three children of the late Alhaji Hakeem Salaudeen, life
suddenly turned upside down recently, when their mother, 39-year-old
Omotayo allegedly connived with an ex-convict, Oladapo Dolapo, to murder
him.
Expectedly the tragic incident has put the children in a pathetic
condition of having to fend for themselves while their mother is now
gnashing her teeth in regret in custody at Ilesa Prison, where she was
remanded by the court following her arraignment by the Osun State Police
Command.
The children, Barakat, 17, Uthman, 15 and 12-year-old Fatima, despite
urgings by members of the extended family, have elected to continue
residing in their parents’ home, to keep it warm and open, as it were,
rather than relocate to the family house in the Agowande area of Osogbo.
Since the gruesome murder of their father, they have been living alone
in the big apartment located on the sleepy street.
One of the children, Uthman and the elder sister, Barakat, told
Sunday Sun they preferred to live in the house alone located in a suburb
of Osogbo, the capital city of Osun State.
“We can only go out when we want to visit our grandma,” they said
together. The grandmother he referred to is the 95-year-old mother of
their late dad, and who is fondly called Alhaja Mosobalaje.
Prodded to explain how they have been coping, especially with respect
to food, Barakat said: “We still have foodstuff in the house. The
foodstuff that mummy bought is still remaining. That is what we are
eating now.”
But how will they survive if the food finishes, Sunday Sun sought to
know, and she said: “We don’t know. That is why we want the law
enforcement agents to forgive our mummy so that she can come back home
and take care of us. Family members alone can’t do everything for us.”
At this point, the three children could no longer hold back tears and
they began to sob, wondering what would become of the beautiful plans
their father laid for them.
Barakat, who just finished from Delightsome Group of Schools, wants
to study at the Obafemi Awolowo University to become an accountant. Her
brother, Uthman wants to go to the Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA) and
become a soldier. But the youngest, Fatima wants to study Theatre Arts
and become an actress.
Uthman and Fatima will be in SSS III and JSS III respectively in the same school as from next session.
Meanwhile, more details have emerged on how the tragedy that befell
them, when residents of the sleepy area woke up and heard the shocking
news that one of their neighbours had been hacked to death by an unknown
assailant the previous night.
Sunday Sun gathered that Salaudeen, who was in his 40s, was
gruesomely murdered in his house about 3.00 am by his wife who hired an
ex-convict, Oladapo Dolapo. The ex-convict is alleged to have stabbed
Salaudeen in the stomach with a knife as his wife choked him with a
pillow.
At the headquarters of the Osun Police Command, where she was paraded
along with her accomplice, Omotayo confessed that she and Dolapo
connived to commit the crime.
“I choked him with a pillow, after having s*x with him and Dolapo
stabbed him to death with a knife. I never thought it would turn out
this way. I hired Oladapo Dolapo to help me kill my husband.”
Dolapo, 24, admitted that the woman contracted him to kill the man
after promising to give him whatever he wanted if the operation was
successful. He disclosed that the deceased’s wife, promised him a
befitting accommodation and other largesse.
While parading the suspect, the Commissioner of Police, Olafimihan
Adeoye disclosed that Mr. Salaudeen Adesina Jimoh of 3, Engineer Adesina
Salawu Street, Osogbo, reported the case at the station on May 12,
2017. He said that on the fateful day about 3:00 am, two unknown men
entered his brother’s house, stabbed him to death with knife but nothing
was carted away.
Adeoye further explained that a team of police detectives and patrol
men went to the scene, where the following inscriptions were found on
the wall of the deceased’s house: “No Price, No Pay,” “Aye Axe” and
“Forgiveness is a sin.”
The CP said investigation by the police revealed that Omotayo did not
only hire Dolapo but actively participated in killing her husband.
The police later arraigned the suspects in court, from where they were remanded at Ilesa Prison.
In an interaction with Sunday Sun, Omotayo said she had lost interest
in her marriage, though she confessed that her husband was a good
person who always took care of her needs and the needs of her children.
“We’ve been married for 17 years. We are blessed with three children
aged 17, 15 and 12. He did not offend me. I was just mad at him,” she
said.
Sunday Sun’s investigations indicated that Omotayo and her accomplice
after murdering the man, made it look like armed robbers killed him.
A family source said that Dolapo, who made open confessions to the
family members at the police station, before he was paraded alongside
Omotayo, said that after he had agreed with the woman to carry out the
dastardly assignment, she smuggled him into the house around 6.00 pm
when the deceased had not come home and hid him inside a small shack
made of woods at the back of the house. He remained there until the
husband came home in the night.
He disclosed that when the man got home, his wife received him warmly
and served him dinner. When the man was eating, the woman went out of
the sitting room and met the assailant where he was hiding and told him
that her husband had arrived and was eating his dinner in the sitting
room.
Before then, when the eldest child, Barakat, noticed that her father
had come back and wanted to greet him and also ask him to take her to a
JAMB examination centre the following morning, her mother chased her
back into the children’s room. She also asked all the children to go and
sleep and warned them not to disturb their father.
It was at that point that she then took Dolapo into one of the rooms
while the three children were in their room. When she got back to the
room, she lured the husband to their room after he had had his dinner.
She began to caress him and they eventually had sexual intercourse.
After the session, she left her husband in bed and went out naked,
pretending to go and have a shower in the bathroom. Instead she went to
meet Dolapo, where he was hiding in one of the rooms and told him that
her husband would soon fall asleep so that they could execute their
plan.
When she returned to the room again, she joined her husband in bed
until she noticed that he had fallen asleep. That was between 2.00 am
and 3.00 am. She then sneaked out quietly and led the assailant into the
bedroom where the man was sleeping.
Once back in the room, she slammed a pillow on his face trying to
choke him, while Dolapo attacked him with a knife and killed him.
To cover up the crime, they made inscriptions on the wall of the
house to indicate that the deceased was a member of a cult group, whose
members must have come to kill him. The inscriptions read thus: “No
price, no pay,” “Aye axe,” and “Forgiveness is a sin.”
She collected the deceased’s phone which was left on a stool, went to
the children’s room and also took their only phone, removed other items
and gave to the assailant to take away, to make it look like the
robbers who killed her husband made away with the items.
Sunday Sun gathered that she asked Dolapo to remove his shirt and
hang it on top of the fence as evidence that it was left there by one of
the robbers who was trying to escape.
For Dolapo to be able to escape, the woman gave her late husband’s
jalabia dress to him to wear, to impersonate him in case he was
confronted by vigilantes, who knew the husband often wore the jalabia in
the neighbourhood.
Then she opened the gate quietly, to let out Dolapo, but he was
noticed by some vigilantes, who truly mistook him for the deceased
because of the jalabia he wore.
Sunday Sun gathered that the assailant sold the deceased’s phone to a
friend. When the crime was reported, MTN was contacted and the police
tracked down the buyer.
It was the buyer who helped the police to trace the assailant and he was later identified as an ex-convict.
When he was paraded by the police, Dolapo said he used to shuttle
between Lagos and Osogbo “to do runs.” According to him, whenever he was
broke, he would go to Lagos to do ‘runs’ and if he made good money, he
would come and spend it in Osogbo.
He disclosed further that it was during his stay in Osogbo that the
woman got in touch with him and they struck the deal that led to the
killing of Alhaji Salaudeen.
The deceased’s younger brother, Adetunji Idris Babatunde, who spoke
with Sunday Sun, said that his late brother told him two weeks before he
was killed that he suspected that his wife was planning to kill him.
But when he asked if he had any serious contention with her, the
deceased said there was no serious issue between them; but he was just
having a feeling that the woman would kill him one day.
On the character of the deceased, Babatunde said: “He was a
responsible man to the core. He was a businessman and very responsible
and committed to his family. He didn’t live a wayward life. He even
bought a car for the wife. I never met them quarrelling any day.
Whenever I visited them, I always noticed that they loved each other.”
Asked what he could suspect as being responsible for the sudden
change in the couple’s relationship, Babatunde said it could be due to
his late brother’s decision to marry the second wife.
According to him, the second wife identified as Tawakalitu who lives in a different house and Omotayo often had quarrels.
Uthman also confirmed that his late father was a nice and responsible
family man who loved his family dearly. His parents were very close and
loved each other very well. He added that they used to go out together
in his father’s car and also shared the same bedroom.
But did the mother ever complain about his late father’s attitude or
character in the presence of the children? Uthman said: “Mummy used to
complain sometimes that daddy’s behaviour towards her had changed since
he married the second wife. She used to complain that daddy was not
giving her attention like before and was not providing all her needs as
he used to do.”
“Mummy was always disturbing daddy to look for a job for her or open a
big shop for her but he did not do that. So, mummy was always
complaining that she was not satisfied with the small shop she had.
Since then, they would quarrel from time to time. But it was not
serious.”
