Police claimed my brother died in motor accident, buried him without contacting family

32-year-old Lagos-based Balogun Sulaimon, who boarded a bus from Lagos to Kano on March 3, 2022, has been missing since then and according to his elder sister, Amudat Balogun-Oladipo, the family suspect foul play in his sudden disappearance

Speaking on the issue, Amudat said one of her brother’s friends that he met during the National Youth Service in Osun State in 2019 came to Lagos to invite him to cover his wedding as a photographer in Kano and he didn’t tell any member of the family about the trip except his fiancée who he gave all the details of his trip.

She stated that he boarded a bus at Alabarago park at around 5 o’clock on March 2, 2022) and his fiancée said they kept talking as he approached the destination and the journey entered its second day, adding that around 6pm, he called her and sounded distressed.

“He told her he wanted to tell her something very important. She said she would get back to him when she finished bathing, so they could talk properly. When she finished bathing, she tried the number again but the number was no longer going through. She didn’t call us on that day but she said she kept on calling the number till about 2am the next day (Friday). She then reached out to us (family) to tell us about the situation.

“My brother and I mobilised other members of the family and we went to that Alabarago Park where he boarded the vehicle going to Kano and enquired about his whereabouts or that of other passengers and the driver. We asked for the manifest but were given a piece of paper where many names were written with the same handwriting. We traced it and saw our brother’s name there. We asked for the original manifest which should be on the official letterhead of the park, but we were not given. When we even checked, we saw that they made a mistake in the mobile phone number which they wrote as my brother’s next-of-kin. They had altered the number themselves.

“They told us that the bus was involved in a ghastly accident and everyone on board died. They didn’t even call us to tell us this had happened. In fact, the man that told us said it so casually in Pidgin English that; “The motor get accident and everybody die!” – and he walked out on us. He spoke as if he was referring to an animal. I asked them how that was possible and why they didn’t call the number provided to tell us that there was an accident. We didn’t even see any report in any newspaper that something of that nature happened,” she said.

She added that they spoke to the chairman of the park and he said what he knows from the report he got was that as the bus was in transit, the driver slept off and hit a stationary petrol-laden tanker and the bus caught fire. Initially, they said everybody died. Later on, the chairman of the park then said they told him that six people escaped from the bus. Much later, they said the people who escaped were nine. I am even confused about what report to believe. They said they took the injured to the Federal Medical Centre in Kogi and gave other people mass burial there.

She stated further that “at the initial time when we began the inquiry, his number was still on. Some of his friends in Lagos here still tried his number and it was going through not until recently that his number then became switched off. The distress call he made to his fiancée is another issue. If it was an accident, how come he was able to call someone to say he wanted to tell her something important? This explanation by these bus park people is not convincing at all. I smell a rat. Their stories are not adding up.

“We even tried to get the contacts of those other people and they claimed they don’t have it. Even the driver that they claimed had died; we want more details on him and his family. How come we are the only ones looking for our brother? What is happening?,” she queried.

She added that “we are not convinced that my brother is dead. That distress call to his fiancée is suspicious. He must have wanted to tell her something. Secondly, we did not see his corpse or any of his belongings. Why didn’t they call us to tell us what happened until we started looking for him? Are they supposed to give them mass burial without contacting their families? No, this is not right.” (Story adapted from the PUNCH)