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.
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 , 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.
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 sex 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.”
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