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Pix 1 ;Yewamde and Lowo
Pix 2 Lowo's dead body
The Lowo could have stabbed my sister to death that morning - Bolatito, Yewande's sister
Who precisely are you?
My name is Bolatito Fatoki-Ademola, a Political Science graduate with a masters degree in International Relations. I am the immediate and only sister to Yewande Oyediran, the lady alleged to have killed her husband. I presently reside in Houston, Texas where I work and also school
.
What kind of person will you say Yewande, your sister, is?
It is hard to tell the world about who she is without being accused of excessively patronizing her. But you can do your own private investigation about her; in her neighbourhood, among her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, Oyo State or her colleagues in school – Olabisi Onabanjo University – where she studied law and perhaps at the Law School in Abuja. But quite precisely, Yewande is loving to be with. She is the kind of sister anyone would like to have, highly religious, committed to whatever she believes in and easy-going. We are quite close.
But this contradicts what the world has been made to know about her… was she temperamental and highly desirous of controlling her environment?
To tell you the truth, I didn’t know until now how powerful the media is; I mean the power to plant strong views and opinions in the hearts and subconscious of the people. It was when the Yewande-Lowo issue came to the public domain that it occurred to me that the media can be used consciously or unconsciously to gain advantage in the minds of the people and in most cases, whoever gets to the hearts and minds of the people first, cultivates it and plants his seeds there is always the champion. Have you ever asked yourself whether the story that has been told so far about Yewande and Lowo are not strictly from the perspective of Uncle Lowo? Has anybody ever bothered to hear the other story… the story of my sister? Because what you have heard so far is seriously tilted in her disfavor. Also, because of this African belief that one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, the dead die with their imperfections and they become saints after their departure. So Uncle Lowo is the saint and my sister, the sinner. Anyway, I have lived with Yewande almost all the days of my life and I am sure she could not have committed the heinous crime attributed to her. She was not temperamental at all and cannot hurt a fly. Yewande or Sister Mi, as we fondly call her, has been like a mother to me. She is very accommodating, quiet, peace-loving, committed and selfless and she is always after everyone’s progress. She will go to a great extent to make those around her happy. I must also state that she is a fervent Christian who does not like to burden others with her problem. She can however be very reserved. To my kids, she is like their second mum as they call her Yeye and I regularly look up to her for advice and so far, I have not regretted. To us in our family, she is our role model and we are proud of her accomplishment.
But with all these flowery words you have used to describe her, how can you reconcile them with the image of a murderer that Yewande has now?
Don't you think that whoever has a deep understanding will know that not every story flying around is definitely true? In fact, some of the reports were given as if the reporter was at the scene when it happened. My sister is not a murderer and I know that wherever Uncle Lowo is right now, he would be regretting all his actions and wish all could change. Hmmm, I would have also lost my sister that day but honestly, God knows best. Uncle Lowo was my egbon, in spite of the atrocities he committed against my sister and even so, my family still loved him so much, especially my dad who would go to any length to assist him...The lesson to all parents is that they should never care what people will say about their child's failed marriage...when you sense violence, abeg, run and in fact, pack your child's clothes yourself.
What do you mean by Lowo’s actions?
Yes. On several occasions, Lololo as I fondly called him, would beat my sister to stupor. It is true that since their marriage in 2012, it has been one day of peace and one day of violence. He had a dual image. If you saw him, you would think he could never hurt a fly but whenever he took alcohol, he got so uncontrollable. This I am sure all his family and friends know about and whenever he was high, Yeyeye (as we call Yewande) became his punching bag. How I wish we could visit the Odogbo barracks in Ibadan. There was a day Uncle Lowo forcefully took my sister and the house girl to a Club at Bodija (411). He was angry that my sister confronted him after a hotel attendant called her from Oyo town claiming she found her phone number in a wallet that someone left in the hotel room (of which Uncle Lowo lied to my sister that he was on an official trip in Port Harcourt during that period. My sister drove to Oyo to collect the wallet and waited for her husband to get back home ) So this day, Uncle Lowo denied as usual and then asked that she and the maid to hop into the car to visit my parents for the festive season. After they left, he drove them done to 411, shouting and saying he would make sure my sister and the maid got raped at the club and that he won't leave the club till late morning and also humiliated my sister that all her Jesus Jesus would end at the club that night. As soon as he drove into the club that night, different ladies hugged and walked him in while he left my sister and the maid in the car. Not up to 20 minutes after he got in there, the maid noticed some men beating another man and that was when my sister realized it was Uncle Low that was being beaten terribly and the men were soldiers. Apparently, he got in there and got drunk, misbehaved and then got into trouble. My sister, who he had really hurt before they got to the club that night had to pull her blouse up for the soldier to see (pleading that she was his wife and she just had a fibroid surgery few days to that time). This was when the soldiers believed her. Just imagine how humiliating it was for my sister to open up her blouse in public? Can any of his family members even wait for such a disgrace? Uncle Lowo still kicked my sister in the stomach and her stitches ruptured. My sister told me that he would take alcohol – not beer o – pure alcohol. Early in the morning, you would see bottles of all the ogogoro in different corners of their house. Uncle Lowo really tortured my sister's belief in God. On several occasions, he would tell my sister that he indulged in alcoholism to be able to talk boldly to people. The landlady of their house who sells drinks was one of those who sold hard drinks to him. Despite all the wahala from Uncle Lowo and her covering him up, I can't believe that all his family members are saying now. They should all cover their faces in shame. Why are they now acting as if they were close to him while alive? Do you know that after Yeyeye's stitches ruptured, she and Uncle Lowo went to the hospital together the second day and when asked in the hospital why the stitches ruptured, she said she was involved in a strenuous exercise! But the landlady of their house, who was like a mother to her, knew of this. When she and Lowo were returning from the hospital and she saw Yewande at the gate limping and she asked what the matter was, she replied that it was the beating of the past few days which she was aware of that led to the rupture. The woman, who is a retired matron in a hospital, was the one who even helped to tend the wound until it healed. The woman is a repository of information on the abuses and violence in their homes. My sister told me that she was shocked when the woman claimed to people that she was the aggressor in the spousal violence that was the day-to-day occurrence in their home. In fact, my adopted daughter and my cousin witnessed several of the abuses. There was a day Uncle Lowo beat Yewande so hard that the landlady had to be helping her massage her body with hot water in the evening. One of the evenings, my sister was taking the hot water out to the landlady's house for another round of massage when Lololo pounced on her. My cousin who was there, was forcefully pushed to the wall by him when she tried to separate them and my daughter and my sister got the hot water on them. T thank God the water wasn't at boiling point. Same night, my sister slept on the floor in the living room. What of the day Uncle Lowo poured hot water on my sister’s legs? Tell me, can any of these people commenting on social media take half of these? There were several of such abuses and now, that same Uncle Lowo is being painted as a saint and my sister the sinner.
You claimed you were close to Lowo…
Yes, we related very well. Remove his violence when he was drunk, he was a good guy to be with so I don't blame all his friends who are supporting and shouting ‘justice for Lowo;...but the question is, can they pray for a husband like Uncle Lowo for any of their sisters? Even these friends of his are people Lowo knew their love for him ended at the beer parlour because when he finally returned home and got a business contract in Nigeria, Uncle Lowo never chose from any of this so-called friends to manage the business. He had to pick an old friend of his that he confirmed that he could trust and that even though he was a Muslim, he knew his level of integrity was very high. All the other ones were so mad at him, and not until recently, he told one of them that he would help him. Left to them, it was my sister that didn't allow him use them as business partners. What pains me most is that they had only started enjoying some peace in their home. He and our dad were like son and dad. They were confidants. Another thing is that Uncle Lowo was very open and nice. Everyone was his friend and both family and friends capitalized on this nature. Lololo could promise you heaven and earth even though he had nothing at the moment in his pocket, so this made the family think he had a lot of money when even the house rent and the home expenses were majorly on my sister and dad. Until recently that he just started getting his business established. Honestly, if Uncle Lowo had come from a family full of integrity and high moral, then the situation would have been better. On that day preceding his death, I spoke with him only for me to be woken up 2am Houston time that he had passed on. My uncle who broke the news didn’t give me the details. He only said we lost Lowo. I was devastated. I wailed uncontrollably and was inconsolable for hours. Even when we knew about the violence between him and my sister, we always prayed that they would grow out of it and the marriage would work eventually. The mistake was that each time it happened, they reconciled and Uncle Lowo would come begging and my sister, the religious lady that she is, would always believe that God would touch his heart. She is extremely prayerful. When she came to Houston last year, she was always singing Christian songs and praying. I observed that she had lost weight within 3 months. She claimed she was fasting so that God would take care of the violence in her home, even though the people around her thought she was on diet. She was too reserved and that, I must say, is the real issue of that marriage and Uncle Lowo's family took her not talking as arrogance. Usually in a marriage, I know one would be outspoken and the other one reserved. In this case, it was so but the man’s family, I guess, took it otherwise and many times, she had reasons to report Uncle Lowo to his family- Iya Adeoye especially. All she did was rebuke him. This same Uncle Lowo we are talking about did not have any blood sibling of same mother and same father, all these people talking are either same mother and step-brothers from father’s side who at growing up would even call Uncle Lowo Omo ale(bastard) as told us by Lowo himself. So much more to talk about honestly...
There was this report in a national daily and even on a national television that you were at the burial of Lowo and you apologized to the family for Yewande’s killing of their son?
It is an orchestrated attempt to get their perspective of the story to sink into the hearts of the people. The truth is that I had not been to Nigeria in the last two years and I could not have been the person they were referring to. They said it was Yewande’s sister who attended the burial and apologized. First, I am the only sister of Yewande’s and I ostensibly couldn’t have attended the burial. I disagree with the entire story. It was a fictitious story written to get their own side of the story to stick in the minds of the people. As I said, not only was I not in Nigeria as at the time they claimed I made the statement, nobody contacted me from any of the media houses to air my view on the matter. I was really shocked when my friends sent me the picture of the newspaper that day. In fact I am totally sad that the newspaper would do such and carry such untrue news. My family was not invited to the burial so we had no representative at the burial who could have made the statement they credited to me. More so, I was informed by my friends who watched the national news on the burial day that a lady was shown and claimed be me. She was said to have been dressed in a veil and wore black dress and dark sunglasses. She was said to have been interviewed and she gave an account that was similar to what the national newspaper published. I have proof of my whereabouts in Houston on the said day and there are witnesses who can confirm that this story was made up but for what purpose and to what end? I wouldn’t know.
The Lowo family claimed that your sister was very jealous, temperamental and didn’t want anyone near her and her husband?
To tell you the truth, with the benefit of hindsight, that marriage was doomed to fail and it shouldn’t have been encouraged from the spiritual and physical angles. The family didn’t like my sister from the beginning. There is a woman called Iya Wunmi, Lowo's elder step brother's wife, who hated my sister with a passion. The brief history about this woman is that I was actually her kid’s school guardian in school in Nigeria as I had business relationship with her and we were quite close. One of her daughters was being abused in the boarding school then and it was this same ‘wicked Yewande’ who got the teacher apprehended and helped the child out of the mess, In fact, with Uncle Lowo's elder brother, we took the daughter to UCH for physiatrist assistance and my aunt had to assist. My sister even took the woman to her pastor so as to pray for the same girl who constantly had several men taking advantage of her. Also, this same Yewande that they alleged to be constantly against their family being together helped process their second daughter's trip to South Africa to study. She was later sent back home when she failed woefully in the school over there but they kept it as a secret, telling everyone she just decided to come back. Another of Lowo’s sister, whom he asked her to go and meet in Lagos, was particularly hostile from the word go. When my sister met her in her office in Lagos, she didn’t hide her disappointment that he wasn’t going to marry a very beautiful mulatto woman. She exclaimed on seeing my sister, ‘ah so you’re the one Lowo wants to marry! You are so short, so dark and so ugly! Your children would be like charcoal! Ah, I have never seen a human being this dark in my life!’ She asked my sister for her qualification and where she worked and when she told her she had an LLM and was a Level 12 officer in the Ministry of Justice, she there and then claimed that my sister would be proud! My sister, who had wanted to spend the night with her in Lagos, had to come back home to Ibadan. This particular woman was childless and never forgave my sister for her role in her attempt to illegally acquire a child. She had broached it to Lowo that a girl wanted to give birth for her and said that my sister, being a lawyer, would help them to perfect the papers. When my sister was told, she told the woman that it would be illegal and advised that even though cumbersome, it was better to go for adoption. My sister went to our mum’s friend at the welfare office in Ibadan to see whether they could fast-track the adoption process and even linked the woman with a lawyer friend of hers in Lagos. The woman however got the baby born for her in spite of my sister’s counsel, the child she bought for N350,000 around May/June 2014. She brought the child to her aunty, Mama Adeoye, who resides in Ibadan and hid him from her husband. One day, Lowo was coming from France and immediately he landed, this woman called him and asked whether he would be spending the night in Lagos with them. Lowo replied that he couldn’t do that as he was returning to Ibadan that his wife was waiting. The woman got angry and said ‘what thing are you going to meet!’ Lowo was very angry with her and called Mama Adeoye to warn her sister for calling his wife ‘that thing’.
There was also this claim that on the day of the engagement ceremony, Lowo’s family presented Yewande with an empty box?
You see, it is indeed a tragic story and we were also spiritually blind not to have noticed the spiritual message that Lowo’s family was sending to us. First and foremost, in this age and time that brides do put even their old clothes in the traditional wedding box, my sister had an empty box. It was really funny because the Iya Wunmi called my sister many times a few days before the engagement, asking her what color of shoes and bags she would love in her box, gold or silver wristwatches? In fact, the calls were too much that I personally waited to see what the content of the box would be. When the box came, it was totally empty and padlocked. Please which father would see this and not be worried? At that point, my dad called Uncle Lowo's two elder brothers who sat as his father on the wedding day and told them about the box. One of them claimed that his wife was in charge of the box and gave the phone to her and this woman claimed she forgot the real box in Gbongan! Please, is it possible to padlock an empty box and not know it? On the wedding day, February 8 2013, Lowo’s family came with traditional gifts. He had given his sisters money with which they would buy all the gifts. After the wedding in the evening and the pastor was going to pray over the gifts and we opened the engagement box, we found out that it was crass empty! We had never heard of it in our lives. We were all aghast. Our friends and all of my sister’s siblings were there. When our father heard, he was angry. He called it an evil aroko which the Yoruba use to communicate one another in ancient traditional society. It was later when this whole thing had happened that we realized that spiritually, that wedding was void ab initio as the lawyers would say, from the spiritual realm. Daddy immediately called Lowo and expressed his anger. Fortunately, Lowo and my sister were in Mummy Wunmi’s house and he expressed his anger that his sisters could do that to him. He there and then asked Mummy Wunmi what happened and she said she mistakenly picked the wrong box! When they went to her house, Lowo asked her to produce the real box and she went upstairs, only to return to tell them she was sorry, she had left it at Gbongan! My brother, is it possible to carry an empty box from Gbongan to Ibadan without knowing it? Lowo gave out the empty box immediately as my daddy asked that it should be gotten rid of immediately. He later bought a new blue box for my sister which Yewande told him she didn’t like. The truth is that, virtually all of them didn’t like Yewande from the beginning. Do they even like themselves? Even last December when one of Uncle Lowo called GO's kids and some of Uncle Lowo's nieces and nephews visited Yewande and Lowo for Xmas break holiday, GO particularly warned Lowo not to take his kids to his elder sister's house that he did not trust her. Uncle Lowo also told me his sisters were so wicked that they even alleged that his brother was sleeping with one Iya Ayomide in his church! My sister who is said not to entertain the family in her house always had either Taiwo, Ore and co visit even at weekends after school. I heard one of Lowo's sisters who was even at their house last December with 13 other kids for over a week granted an interview at the last court session claiming that she never visited because my sister would always put chairs outside and not allow anyone into her home! It's a shame when people lie and say stuffs that are totally untrue to get pity. They all spend weekends in their house and even week days. I have pictures and videos of a day when my sister and all members of the family who came visiting went to the Agodi Gardens in Ibadan for recreation. None of them liked my sister from the beginning because they felt that she would stop the free flow of money that they collected from him. They had the mentality that once you come back from a foreign land, it's plenty money that you brought but Uncle Lowo was generous with it and anyone of them who came to their house, if he didn’t have money on him, he would hand them his ATM card and supply the pin number to go and collect a certain amount. That was why when he died and the family stormed their house to pick his things, they were looking for his ATM card and documents of his property which they have shared among themselves. Could you believe that when he was taken to the mortuary and they were asked to pay for autopsy, Lowo's elder brother asked if my younger brother could follow him to Lowo's house so that he could take his ATM card to withdraw the money needed? For instance, my sister, who was using a Honda car, decided to sell it in preparation for Lowo’s planned final arrival in Nigeria in 2014 so that her husband would not use a car without AC, She had collected her car grant from the ministry and her regular robe allowance and bought an SUV, believing that when Lowo arrived, it would be appropriate for the family. When Mama Adeoye, who was the eldest daughter of Lowo’s mother, saw the car, her thought Uncle Lowo was the one who bought it for his wife. She started behaving funny and told Lowo that instead of helping her son, he gave my sister money to be changing cars anyhow.
At what point was it obvious that things were really disintegrating among the couple?
From the word go! But like many married couples going through abuses, my sister never spoke up and bottled her marital crises. They had ups and downs really in their family. I am sure the issue of lack of child worsened the take for them. All of a sudden, Uncle Lowo started changing. He started drinking heavily and coming home late into the night. He was exhibiting strange traits and suddenly became violent. My sister reported to Mama Adeoye; and even went to GO in Lagos as Lowo already cut off her relationship with his father's side of the family. Earlier this year, Lowo even claimed he met a pastor who told him not to visit Gbongan at all this year. Not until about 2 weeks before his death that he confessed to my sister that he had to go give his elder brother money as he said he was really broke and that he didn't get to the house but met him at his water business office. Meanwhile, the landlord was like a brother to our dad as he was his senior in school so my sister called him and his wife mummy and daddy. He would beat my sister severely at every slight provocation. She moved out of his house on about four occasions to our daddy’s house and to our cousins’ places in Lagos. He started picking quarrels when she cooked, he would say it tasted sour. One day, she cooked and when he asked who cooked, she said Bama, their housemaid did and Lowo said it tasted better whereas my sister cooked it. One day, he confronted her alleging that her private part was smelling. My sister was embarrassed. She got to her office and called her female colleagues to help her check whether indeed it was smelling. It was that bad. One other day, in March 2015 to be precise, he deflated the tyres of her car and locked all doors to their apartment, except the main door. My sister had gone to take her bath. When she came back, she found out that he had packed all her undies away. One other day, Lowo left home after getting a call.
There was this allegation that Yewande got angry when she heard that he had given birth to a child out of wedlock and stabbed him in the room?
It is not true at all. What happened was that, in May or June, 2015, my sister’s phone rang. It was in the evening. An unknown number was calling her. When she picked it, it was a woman who identified herself as Rachael Jegede from France. The woman said Uncle Lowo impregnated her and she had a four-month old child christened Omotara. The woman was agitated and insulting. She yelled, ‘you think you had him to yourself?’ When Uncle Lowo came home in the evening, my sister went and opened the gate for him and taunted him, e kaabo, baba Omotara! (welcome home, Omotara’s father). He pretended as if he didn’t hear and later denied outright. My sister brought out a bible for him to swear that the woman was lying. He didn’t. The next day, she packed a bag and told Uncle Lowo she was going to see their Pastor. He followed her. The name of the man of God is Pastor Akinbobola. She cried in the presence of the pastor and walked away, leaving Uncle Lowo and the pastor. She had been gone far when the pastor called her and asked her to return which she reluctantly did. On getting there, Uncle Lowo prostrated to her and was weeping. Pastor Akinbobola asked Uncle Lowo to tell my sister what he confessed to him. There and then, Uncle Lowo confessed that it was true that the child was the product of a fling between him and the woman in France. They both went back home after the pastor’s intervention but the second day, my sister packed out of the house and went to our cousin’s place in Lagos. She was there for days, switched off her phone and was incommunicado. She left that one and went to another cousin’s house called Yemisi, but my sister never told Yemisi why she was there even when I pleaded she should as I was far from home and there was no way for me to console her but Yemisi would be able to. Her claim was that if you sell your family cheap, you will never be able to buy him for more. She later went back home and made up with Uncle Lowo, especially after his promise that he would only collect the child when he is of age and didn’t intend to marry the mother. Do you know that Uncle Lowo refused to tell his family members about the child? His reason was that if he told them, their adversity against my sister would be worse as they would bypass her and start dealing with the France woman. Uncle Lowo told only one old man, his mother’s brother. My sister followed Uncle Lowo to the France woman’s mother’s house to identify himself as one who impregnated her daughter. They had made up finally about the issue of the child. For example, Uncle Lowo was to go to France February 16, 2016 and changed the ticket to March 1, to attend the child’s birthday onMarch 6. My sister got clothes for the baby and when she even told me, I was angry as I told her it was something I would ever do. If you get to their house now, you would see the navy blue atiku clothe she got for Omotara's birthday as Uncle Lowo said he wanted him to wear native like how my own kids do on their first birthdays. But the France woman would call, tongue-lashing my sister that she was the one stopping Uncle Lowo from coming to see his child. In January, our daddy called the two of them. A few days earlier, he had called Uncle Lowo that he had an urgent message for him. Uncle Lowo had to take Okada to go and see our dad. My daddy told him that a lady claimed to be calling from France called him and warned him to tell my sister to pack her stuffs out of Uncle Lowo's house, that she was the rightful owner and she was ready to claim her man and my dad told her he would deliver her message even though he was shocked at that time as it was his first time of hearing the news. How she got his phone number, we wouldn’t know. He was apprehensive that if my sister heard, she would be disconsolate. Uncle Lowo had to tell him that my sister heard the story almost six months earlier. When daddy called the two of them to a meeting on January 2, the first thing he said was that, you these children are very dangerous, so you kept this information from me all this while!
So how did this issue of stabbing occur?
First, they had come round their problem and were doing fine. On the Monday that the whole issue began, my sister had gone to the office and by around 2pm, Uncle Lowo called her on phone that he was at GTB in Bodija, could she pick her up when going home? He had left his car in Lagos. She was on her way to meet him, had even got to the Skye Bank area of Secretariat when her source at the FRSC office called her that the Driver’s Licence she paid for since all these days and hadn’t done the biometric capturing was now ready. She called Uncle Lowo who encouraged her to go, knowing how she had lamented not being able to do the capturing for long. She didn’t finish with it until around 5pm and had to call him again that she would be heading for the church from there. Their church had just begun a 21-day fasting which Yewande was involved in. she left the church around 8pm and Uncle Lowo called her and asked her to pick him at the General Gas area of Akobo on her way home. She had started driving when she realized that, rather than come home through that area, she was driving home through Iwo Road area. When she called Uncle Lowo to tell him, they both joked over it. Uncle Lowo came home that night on bike. My sister had bought petrol which they would use to power their generator. When she arrived, Uncle Lowo it was who opened the gate for her and was the one who poured the petrol into the generator. He said he had bought moinmoin for her and when she told him she wanted to eat the corn and beans she had cooked the previous day kept in the fridge, he jokingly asked her not to waste his money, Infact Uncle Lowo's P.A. was in the house at that time as he waited for some money my sister was bringing home for Uncle Lowo and Uncle Lowo said he was going to Ogbomoso the second day. They usually went to their site which they were developing, every night, which was just about three streets away from them, to pray over the property around 10pm. When Uncle Lowo was going to buy the land and his money was not enough, he collected money from my daddy and his brother called G.O to make up the amount. He never told any of his father's side and they were indeed shocked when they heard after his death that he and his wife did the foundation to their property a week before Uncle Lowo's death. They had gone to the site that night and returned. Uncle Lowo was in the bedroom while my sister was in the living room watching Telemundo. All of a sudden, her phone rang. It was almost midnight. It was the France woman again and she began her tirade. Annoyed, my sister stormed the bedroom, which any lady would do, and told Uncle Lowo that hadn’t she told him to warn the woman to stop calling her! Instead of placating her, he thundered, ‘who do you think you are! Stupid woman!’ and a fight ensued. He slapped her severally and pinned her head to the bed. When she was running out of breath, she stretched her hand up the cabinet and found a scissors which she used to hit him on the shoulder. They started pursuing each other. The landlord and landlady were already by the locked door banging it and asking them to open it. When they did, the couple walked in. The landlady, who is a retired matron, helped Lowo to treat the wound and as they were still in the sitting room, Uncle Lowo walked away without telling them where he was going. He came back and when asked by the landlord why he walked away without telling them, he said he had gone to a clinic some metres away to dress the wound. The landlady and landlord talked to them and Uncle Lowo promised that he was no longer annoyed. The landlady even offered that Uncle Lowo should come and sleep in their apartment over night but he refused, saying he had forgiven her. You see, they had issues with their main door which they always used a big wood to hit every night they are sleeping. As the landlord and landlady left, my sister went and switched off the generator and proceeded to lock the door by hitting it with the wood. Immediately, the couple rushed back, thinking they had begun another round of violence but my sister told them she was only locking the door. The landlady then whispered to her not to lock the door, in case Uncle Lowo wanted to retaliate. This was around 3am on Tuesday morning, February 2, 2016. They both went and slept on the same bed. About an hour after, my sister was woken by a violent retaliation from Uncle Lowo. He was using the wood to hit her. She rushed out of the apartment into the open and Uncle Lowo followed her. This time, she saw a knife, one of the set they bought, with him. Uncle Lowo thought she had locked the door and couldn’t escape. She pushed the door open and fled outside at that wee hour of the night, shouting for the landlord and landlady to come and rescue her but nobody came. Uncle Lowo pursued her out and finally got her pinned to a Toyota Camry car that belonged to the landlord. A scuffle ensued between them, with Uncle Lowo holding the knife and she also holding on to his hand. All of a sudden, she wrenched herself free from him and ran upstairs to the landlord’s apartment, banging it and asking him and his wife to come to her rescue. Then she saw Uncle Lowo coming towards her but noticed that his gait was wobbly. She also noticed that he was drenched in blood and he collapsed when he got to her front at the landlord’s apartment. The landlord and landlady then came out and my sister pleaded that they should help her carry Uncle Lowo to the hospital. She went and searched for her car key but couldn’t find it. Uncle Lowo had apparently kept it. The landlord claimed that he couldn’t drive at that time of the morning and they had to go and call a neighbor, Mummy Nifemi, who also refused, claiming she didn’t have fuel. This same Mummy Nifemi my sister paid part of her kids’ fees in January when they could not return to school. My sister always gave her food stuffs and would even give her kids her house key to use her oven to bake while she was at work. Do you know this Mummy Nifemi is so close to Uncle Lowo's family now? In fact she tagged my sister wicked. God will surely vindicate my sister and then my family and I will sit back and have a good laugh. My sister had to plead with her that she would buy her fuel. They drove down to the hospital. Uncle Lowo was still breathing. My sister lit the car’s inner light to be looking at him. She kept on shouting, ‘blink, Lowo! Can you hear me?!’ and he made attempts to blink. The Mummy Nifemi stopped at the Bambi Hospital at Akobo where she went to collect a referral to take Uncle Lowo to UCH. A lady doctor came and they took Uncle Lowo on a stretcher inside. My sister remembered that she went inside with them and the doctor asked that she be let alone to examine him. That was all she knew until she woke up at the police station. She had apparently passed out when they announced to her that Uncle Lowo had passed on. Curiously, my sister said she saw the landlord who claimed he couldn’t drive at that time of the night drive past them to God-knows where. Mind you, with all the rumors in social media that Uncle Lowo was stabbed in his sleep on the bed, not even a drop of blood was found inside their house as everything happened outside the house and all these Uncle Lowo family members knew because the police took them to the crime scene and they even saw the scene.
What else do you know?
A lot of things in this whole episode just wouldn’t add up. First, we were told that one previous tenant in their landlord’s house also used his car to kill somebody and had to be arrested. Second, do you know that the famous Pastor Ajanaku of the Tope Alabi fame, who was said to have died mysteriously, was Uncle Lowo’s step brother too? We called him Brother Abass. What hurts most is that the story began to assume different colouration almost immediately. The landlord and landlady who knew the history of violence on my sister are said to be saying a different thing now. So also Uncle Lowo’s family and friends. While my sister was still unconscious after the news, they told a popular blogger that she was in hiding. I also have pictures sent to me of what my sister looked like on that day with bruises all over her and knife cut on her chest and breast area and a swollen head and swollen elbows. Pictures don't lie. Also, the day the family members went with the police to the crime scene, the family members were there with them and carted away all their property, from company documents, phones and carried away 4 suitcases. The police were just looking at them. You can't but wonder how true it is that they are unhappy about Uncle Lowo’s demise. But the one that pains me most is that, nobody is asking for the story of Yewande. Was she insane as to have stabbed her husband. Even looking at the picture spread around, could Yewande handle a man as to stab him? Look at Uncle Lowo's eyes in the picture. He had boxers on. It was obvious he was drunk.We have heard several stories of men beating their wives to death and no one has emphasized its probability in this case. For Christ's sake, Yewande could be anyone of those casting aspersion on her’s daughter, sister, cousin. We shouldn't just sit down and find her guilty without hearing her own story. The truth is, there were only two people who were present at the murder scene – Uncle Lowo and my sister. One of them is dead. The world has heard the story from Uncle Lowo's angle. Can we be patient enough to hear it from my sister's perspective? Yes, she could make it up in her favour but the listeners are not dunces; we can use our brains to add things up.
There was also this rumour that the tragedy was spiritual, that Yewande, as Principal State Counsel, was involved in prosecuting a murder case of a boy who killed his brother and when the father asked that she hands off the case, she refused?
I don’t think it is true. Apart from Lowo, I am my sister’s only confidant. What happened that was close to this was that she headed the prosecution team in the case of a Lead City University student who killed his friend, another student. She was attached to Court13, 11 and 10 of the Oyo State High Court. The father of the victim, acting on the rumour that my sister had collected bribe from the accused family, offered her N100,000 which she rejected. He now asked another lawyer, one Alhaji, to come and offer her $1000 which she refused. She never knew how they found out that she was coming to the US for her vacation. The father of the victim now started sending abusive and threatening text messages to her and she had to report to the Director of Public Prosecution and the Permanent Secretary in her ministry. They called the man and talked down on him, telling him that my sister was one of the most incorruptible counsels they had. That was the only case she was handling that looked like what you just said. Honestly, I could go on and on but I need to stop here.
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