The arrest of Muyideen Opeyemi Arowolo (29) who killed his wife and son by setting them on fire on December 27, 2013 elicited different emotions in residents of Ibadan, Oyo State, when the news broke at the beginning of the week that he had been arrested.
Though he was arraigned in court on Thursday, January 23, and remanded in prison custody, Crime Reports held an interview with him a day after his arrest. Below is the narration of what he said led to his act:
Background
I am from Saki in Oke Ogun area of Oyo State but I was born in Ibadan. I am a bricklayer. I met Felicia in 2006 and we got married. I am a muslim and she was a Christian but that never created any problem between us. We had another child apart from Gbolahan. His name was Abeeb but he died in 2012 during an illness.
What led to the quarrel between us
We had separated from each other in February 2013. But when she was sick in October, I came from Lagos where I was working to take care of her, after which I returned. She called me again and said she was being given drips. I came and also visited her family members to inform them of her illness, bringing it to their notice that I was going back to Lagos since we were separated.
They did not accept this, saying that they were going to demand her from me if anything should happen. It was when the family members got there that they discovered that she committed an abortion. She confessed that she got pregnant for one Adisa at Beere and she decided to abort it. I called her attention to the fact that the boy was much younger than her but she said it did not matter since he had money to take care of her.
When she became well, the family settled our misunderstanding and we came back together. Not long after, in December 2013, she got pregnant, and I informed those who mediated in our quarrel. She later decided to abort the pregnancy without my consent and I also informed them and her close friend.
I later learnt from our neighbours that she said she just met a man who promised her a lot of things which she did not want to miss if he should discover she was pregnant. It was her adulterous ways that led to our separation in the first instance.
What happened then was that I travelled to go and work and didn’t tell her when I would return. By the time I came back, I met a man in the room who came to sleep with her. She even told some boys to come and kill me in the house but one of our neighbours told the boys to go away because it was a couple’s quarrel.
Not long after she committed abortion in December 2013, I noticed that each time I urinated, it was blood that was coming out. I told her that I caught the disease from her because I didn’t sleep with any other woman, saying that I would bring herbal concoction to treat her and myself. She asked me to treat myself and leave her alone. I went to tell her friend, Iya Fatimoh.
About five days later, I discovered that my manhood started reducing in size. I was a well-endowed man. I also lost erection and this made me to be so worried. But she told me that she deliberately inflicted me with the disease. When I asked for the solution, she replied that the only solution was for me to go and die. I left the house to take care of myself at my mother’s place but was told she had gone to Ilorin in Kwara State. I came back home and we started quarrelling. Our neighbour came and she repeated that I should go and die. I pulled down my trousers and showed everybody what was left of my manhood.
On the money his wife accused him of stealing
I did not steal the money; I only collected her money, N8,000, from the woman opposite our room. I told the woman that I would explain to my wife that I used N5,000 to buy herbal concoction, but immediately I stepped in, she started shouting and created a scene. It is true I threw a stone at her just to keep her shut when she started calling me a jailbird. This was because I felt she had said too much. She went upstairs and started shouting again.
An elderly neighbour downstairs asked some boys to go after me but I ran away. Later, I came back and a neighbour, an Aafa, told me to run away because there was plan against me. That was why I used padlock on each room to stop our co-tenants from coming out to apprehend me. The back door on the ground floor was not locked, so I went upstairs. My wife came and started shouting to people that she had apprehended me, unknown to her that I had already locked everybody in.
I poured the petrol that was in the keg I held on her and she left me to go inside. As she moved near the lantern, she went ablaze. There is nothing I want to say at this moment that will justify my action. When I learnt that she died, I felt very bad.
Why my son was involved
We were in the passage upstairs when I poured the petrol on her and as she entered, she shouted for our next door neighbour’s help. My son was also there, shouting that the neighbour should bring water to quench the fire on his mother’s body. I never knew he went inside to meet his mother because I left the place then. If I had known he would do that, I would have taken him away from the house.
On his statement that she would not witness January 2014
It is true I said so but that was because she said I should go and die.
What sent him to prison
I will not say I actually went to prison. What happened was that in 2012, a friend of mine at Isale Aafa area of Ibadan introduced money ritual to me and I said I was not interested. They started threatening my life so I went to Idi Aro Police station to lodge a report. I was told to go back and mingle with them so that they could be arrested. When the police eventually arrested those people, they claimed I was part of them and was just deceiving the police.
The case was charged to court and I was granted bail but when I could not fulfil bail conditions, I was kept in the prison until my sureties came. When we were quarrelling, my late wife mentioned it and I replied that I went to prison with her brother, just to disparage her in the presence of others.
Why he did not consider his son
I told her to let me take my son and we should go our separate ways, but she replied that she did not meet any child in my house and would not leave her child. I didn’t intend to kill my son; he was our first child and only living child. The second child we had together, Abeeb, died in 2012. I had plans that when Gbolahan would clock seven years, I would do some things for him. He was once living with my mother but his mother went to take him when the second child died, as she accused my mother of killing the child.
On issue of contracting Sexually Transmitted Disease
My male organ is no longer working. I don’t experience erection again and it has reduced drastically in size. I can show you to let you assess it yourself (pulling off his trousers); you can take the picture if you like. Now when I urinate, the blood that comes out is not as thick as before. I have never taken bath in stream and I have not slept with any woman except my wife. I don’t even have a single girlfriend.
On the allegation of being a hemp smoker
I have never taken marijuana in my life. I don’t take cigarette or alcohol.
What he wants from government
If the government should look at the enormity of my offence, I know there is no amount of pleading that would bring forgiveness my way. But whatever the government feels my family should do to compensate my late wife’s family, and to replace the damaged properties, it should please consider that. People should realize that even if I was remote-controlled spiritually to do what I did, it would not have been possible if we did not allow our differences to become open.
I plead that the government should have mercy on me. I already have a disease I am battling with. But if it is not possible for me to be forgiven, I have no choice but to come to terms with whatever becomes my fate.
I regret my action because I never knew it would end tragically like that. That was why I decided to give myself in. I was the one who went to my family members on Friday that I wanted to turn myself in to the police. My brother-in-law was called and he agreed that I should turn myself in. He was the one who called the police from Mokola Division so that they could lead me through Beere area to prevent my being lynched by area boys.
I have been within the city since the occurrence but I did not know that my wife and child died. I called one Aafa at the back of our house and he told me that they were still in hospital. It was when I got to police station on Friday (January 17) that I learnt that they were dead. I was staying within Galaxy, Oke Are and Agala areas. Even, my friends came and suggested that I should run to another part of the country but I refused.
via@Tribune
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