8th February, 2013
A former Librarian of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo awaiting justice through the Industrial Court is brutally murdered
When Harry Taiyelolu Akinyosoye lost his job as Librarian of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo in questionable circumstances, in the latter part of 2011, it was a bitter pill for him and his family to swallow. But a worse fate was their lot on 18 January 2013. At the break of dawn, his life was brutally snuffed out through a gruesome process, by assassins in the guise of robbers.
At exactly 4.46 a.m. that day, his wife woke up at their home in Adebowale Estate, along Akure/Ondo road, to relieve herself. When she was through at the ensuite bathroom, she discovered the washbasin’s tap was not flowing. Akinyosoye, who was also awake and awaiting his turn to use the bathroom, was puzzled, since the water tank behind the house had been pumped full the previous day.
After inspecting all the taps in the kitchen and bathrooms in each room in the bungalow, and confirming they were all turned off, he unlocked the door leading out to the compound to check if the tap from where his neighbours are allowed to fetch water was left running. But it was also off.
The last point to check was the main tank behind the house, where Akinyosoye was surprised to discover that the flow of water into the house had been shut. After he turned it on, and called out to confirm from his wife if the taps inside were running, the killers, who had turned off the water flow and were lurking behind the house, struck. Four men, each wielding a gun and an axe, pounced on Akinyosoye.
Akinyosoye’s shrill cries brought his wife and 15-year-old son rushing out, only to rush back inside after sighting the assailants pounding their patriarch on the floor near the tank. The wife’s move to reach for her mobile phone to make calls for help was aborted by two of the assailants, who grabbed her and her son, holding them hostage in her room. They demanded for N20 million, which they claimed Akinyosoye brought home from the bank the day before. When they were told that only N10,000 was in the house, they seized the money, two mobile phones, a bag of clothes, Akinyosoye’s laptop and a flatscreen television.
While this was going on in the house, the other two assailants continued the onslaught on the former librarian outside.
After robbing her, Mrs. Akinyosoye was ordered at gunpoint to strip naked, and drive them out of the house. Pleading for her life to be spared, the naked woman drove the men out of the estate, with her husband dumped in the boot of her Audi saloon car. After driving some metres on the Ondo/Akure road, she was ordered to turn into a bush path near the Nigerian Television Authority, Akure. Then Akinyosoye’s almost lifeless body was removed from the boot and carried deeper into the bush. By then it was almost daybreak. When Akinyosoye’s wife eventually managed to escape, she headed for a nearby church, Fruit of Faith Ministries, where she was given some clothes and escorted to the Fanibi police station, Akure. A party, including policemen, that came back to the crime scene discovered Akinyosoye’s battered body in the bush. He was dead.
From this magazine’s findings, Akinrosoye’s killers must have gained entry into his compound by scaling the barbed-wire fence, which is usually electrified, sorrounding the house. On the fateful day, there was a power outage when the murderous operation occurred. And a section of the barbed wire, where it is believed the assassins scaled, was depressed. The magazine gathered from a police source that such fences are usually scaled by spreading layers of thick blankets on top of the barbed wire.
Akinyosoye’s tenure as the librarian of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic was truncated in controversial circumstances.
He was the chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, at the Federal University of Technology, Akure prior to 2008, when he was appointed as the librarian of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic. He was reputed to have saved the institution N5 million on book purchases in 2009, only to be accused of padding up, by N1.5 million, the prices of books supplied in 2010 to enable the institution meet up with accreditation standards. His denial of the allegation notwithstanding, a panel set up by the institution suspended him for six months.
Although he was recalled after the suspension, his appointment was soon terminated, forcing him to seek redress in court. Akinyosoye, it was widely believed, had a strong case concerning the accusation of unduly inflating book prices by the institution’s authorities. The institution’s rule, at the period of accreditation when the books were purchased, was for all principal officers (including Akinyosoye, the librarian), not to handle physical cash meant for any purchase. For the N5 million released to the the library department, N3mn was released in the name of the deputy librarian, while the balance of N2mn was released to the deputy’s immediate subordinate in the library department. Akinyosoye’s battle for vindication, which has lingered for the past one year at the Industrial Court, died with him. The next court session was to hold last week.
All through the several adjournments which dragged the case for one year, the Rufus Giwa Polytechnic changed lawyers severally, with each counsel claiming that more time was needed to study the case.
TheNEWS gathered that the murdered librarian was neither politically active nor business inclined. He dedicated the abundant spare time he had courtesy of his dismissal from the polytechnic to the completion of his Ph.D programme at the University of Ibadan, before he was killed
—Funsho Balogun