Five Ota residents charged with manslaughter after stoning power company official to death over generator fumes

FIVE local residents of the Ota-Idiroko area in the Ota suburb of Ogun State have been arrested by the police for allegedly stoning an official of the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Peter Ayole to death after a dispute over generator fumes.

Mr Ayole, 52, was said to be an auditor at the Abakaliki, Ebonyi State office of the company and was on leave, which he decided to spend with his wife and children at their house in Ota. During the visit, however, Mr Ayole had a disagreement with some neighbours, at a site belonging to him, over generator fumes.

He was reportedly protesting the alleged refusal of the neighbours to turn off the generator when he was stoned to death. His widow, Oluwafunmilayo Ayole, explained that the incident happened on Wednesday, May 23.

She said:  “We were together at home that morning when he said he was going to our site to see how the plumbers were doing as we had had some people coming to ask us that they needed rooms for rent. Not up to 30 minutes after he left, I got a call that my husband had fallen after he was stoned.

"The site is just a stone’s throw from our house, so I got there in no time and I saw that he had been laid on a plank, lifeless. I asked what happened and I was told that he was stoned by some people who sold confectionary beside the construction site."

Mrs Ayole pointed out that she was told that when her husband arrived at the site, he met the plumbers idle and they told him they could not work because of the fumes from the generator of the neighbours who were selling confectionary. She said her husband had complained to her several times about them before and all his appeals to them to shift their generator house were abortive.

“So, he picked a stick and climbed three blocks beside the toilet under construction and started hitting the roof of their building with the stick and calling them to turn off their generator. My husband continued hitting the roof when someone stoned him with something like a grinding stone, which hit him in the head and he fell and became unconscious.

“The workers at the site took him to a private facility in the area where he was confirmed dead and he was subsequently brought back to the site. We took him to another private hospital, where the doctor did not even allow us to bring him in before confirming him dead but he said we could still keep him in an airy place to see if he would regain consciousness," Mrs Ayole added.

She pointed out that before her husband was taken to a mortuary, some policemen from the Onipanu division visited the site, saying they had come to arrest the late Peter for disturbing the peace of the suspects. Mrs Ayole explained that the policemen, on discovering that Peter was dead, demanded that she follow them to make a statement at the station.

“Obviously, those people after seeing the damage they had caused, went to report to the police as a cover-up. One of the men with me later volunteered to make a statement on my behalf at the division,” she said.

Five suspects were arrested by the police over Mr Ayole's death. They include Morenike Akinleye (43), Ajah Chijioke (46), Sulaimon Akinleye (30), Bose Adebesin (24) and Nurudeen Adekunbi (20).

They have been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Eleweran, Abeokuta and were later arraigned before an Ota Magistrate’s Court on two counts of manslaughter. While the defence counsel moved the application for their bail, the prosecutor asked that they be remanded in custody, so the magistrate, J.A Akan, remanded the defendants in prison and adjourned the case till July 9, 2018.