Just In: Man Murdered On OAU Campus

A man, said to be in late twenties, was murdered on the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, late on Thursday, following a face-off he had with his suspected killers.

The deceased, Adewunmi, was a child of cleaner in the University. The incident leading to his death happened at the New Bukka, an area on campus hosting bars and restaurants that serve a wide range of customers, including those who are neither students or staff of OAU.

Blood was seen by the time our correspondent got to the seen.

According to an eyewitness, Mr. Ola, who works at New Bukka as watchman, Mr. Adewumi was struck with a diabolical ring and then stabbed in the neck by a man who left the scene, after the incident, with his friends in a Toyota Highlander Sport Utility Vehicle.

“I was shocked like it was like a film trick seeing those guys kill the man,” began the eyewitness. “One of them, who wore a white jersey, struck him with a ring in his hands and later stabbed him in the neck.”

He continued: “I tried settling the fight but I was the only one watching over the place. As I was separating them from beating each other, I was being pushed here and there. If probably we were two watchmen on duty, they wouldn’t have escaped because as one was settling the fight, the other would be locking the gates.”

Another eyewitness lamented that the security response was late, and his survival had become impossible, having lost “so much blood”, by the time response was received.

Had it been that the security came in good time and he was rushed to the Clinic immediately, he would not have died and the culprits would have been apprehended,” said the eyewitness, a bartender with Tarzan Delicacies. By the time an arrangement was made to rescue the poor man, he had already lost so much blood.”

He added that the “killers” emerged from one of the bars called ‘Mai Place’ and the bartender there, Okolie Victor popularly called Chawlee, a student of the university, could not claim ignorance of the identity of the attackers.

“They came out of MAI PLACE, the bar tender and the hype man, who is Chawlee can not say they don’t know those guys because they came out of their place. Every trouble caused in New Bukka has always been from that place,” he said.

However, Mr. Okolie said he could not identify the suspected killers.

“I don’t know and they are not students. Probably they had issues with payment of bills. It was our bar tender who followed them. I don’t know anything. I do my job with no personal relationship between me and the customers,” he said.

OAU’s New Bukka is a security risk, with many innocent people exposed to danger as the place hosts non-students, who hardly undergo any security screening before access.

“Like I have once experienced, the padlocks here can be broken through easily,” complained the first witness in this story, the watchman. “We’ve complained several times but the management would not answer.”

Nothing came of efforts to reach both the school’s spokesperson and the security chief by phone. The spokesperson’s phone was switched off, while the CSO did not answer calls or reply texts.