Abdulfatah Oladeinde
Dr Emmanuel Ogah, the medical doctor who stabbed his mother, Janet Ogah, to death has died in the custody of the Nigerian Correctional Service in Abeokuta, Ogun State five years after the bizarre incident.
Dr Ogah, a national youth corps member in Jigawa State, had travelled home on March 5, 2017. The next day, he had a dispute with his mother and knifed her to death at her restaurant along Lafenwa-Itele Road, Aparadija in Ado Odo/Ota Local Government Area, Ogun State.
He had claimed that his mother was in the habit of insulting and disgracing him in the presence of her apprentices, and that provoked him into taking her life.
Following his arrest by the police, Dr Ogah had remained in the custody of the Nigerian Correctional Service while standing murder trial.
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The Nigerian Xpress gathered last week that he took ill recently at the Abeokuta correctional facility and was admitted to the State Hospital, Sokenu, Abeokuta. The nature of his ailment could not be immediately ascertained.
When Dr Ogah’s condition deteriorated, the correctional service officers invited his family on Saturday, March 5.
Cletus, one of his older brothers flew in from Abuja on Monday, March 7, only to find that the medical doctor had died and his body moved to the hospital mortuary.
The retrieval of the deceased’s body from the hospital morgue was a complex process that lasted days as his trial was still to be concluded before he died.
After obtaining the death certificate from the hospital, Cletus had to be accompanied by the correctional service officers to the court for the case to be terminated to facilitate the release of the body to the family.
Between last Monday and Wednesday, Cletus was at the hospital going through the formalities after which the deceased’s corpse was released for burial.
Though the Ogahs hail from Agila
Village via Oturkpo in Benue State, the family decided to bury the deceased doctor in Abeokuta to avoid igniting negative sentiments especially because their mother had been taken home for burial after she was killed.
The Nigerian Xpress gathered that the family’s anger and frustration over the circumstance of Mrs Janet Ogah’s death had made the medical doctor’s court case linger until he passed on.
His matter could not proceed to a full trial after it was established that he had a mental health condition, which propelled the stabbing to the death of his mother.
The judge handling the trial, it was learnt, had wanted to strike out the case but the family was worried about how to prevent any further possible untoward acts if the medical doctor was set free.
Cletus said it was just when the family decided to begin the move for his release that they were informed about his sudden illness and eventual death.
Dr Emmanuel Ogah was a brilliant student. He graduated from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Cletus had told The Punch in an interview shortly after their mum’s killing in 2017 that his younger brother scored well over 4 points in Cumulative Grade Point Average when he graduated in Medicine from ABU in 2007.
He said, “He made 4.38 as his CGPA at ABU”.
He had told The Punch correspondent that all the seven children of their late mother were graduates, four of whom graduated from the ABU. Cletus said he read Chemical Engineering.
He said that the family first noticed that Emmanuel had a mental health problem in 2008, a year after his graduation.
“We noticed the problem of depression in him in 2008, when he was doing his housemanship. He was reported to have spoken rudely to his superiors.
“He was sent away from that place. Again, in subsequent years, he went to some other places for the housemanship, the same thing happened.
“We took him to the Psychiatric Hospital at Yaba, Lagos in 2014 where he was receiving treatment and doing his housemanship.
“Eventually he completed it at this place, but he was still asked to go and serve the one-year national service because they said he was 27 when he graduated from ABU. That was what he was doing at Jigawa State when he returned last Wednesday and he killed our mother on Thursday.”
According to Cletus, Emmanuel occasionally suffered a relapse of the mental health condition, thought to be schizophrenia. It was what caused his go for the national youth service in 2016, nine years after graduating as a medical student.
The family had also made several efforts to find a solution to Emmanuel’s health challenge, including taking him to psychiatric facilities in Kaduna, Kano, Lagos and Uyo.
The challenge, however, persisted until the day Emmanuel had the relapse, which made him stab his mother, disembowelling her and also inflicting knife wounds on her face and neck.
Cletus, who got to the scene of the incident shortly after, said it was obvious his brother had had a deterioration of his condition, precipitating the gruesome act.
“When I arrived at our mother’s restaurant two hours after the incident, Emmanuel was still being held inside the shop, I moved closer to him, jabbed him twice and asked him: ‘why did you kill our mother?’ All he could say was ‘brother, I did not know what happened, brother, I did know what happened’ and he started crying.
“Then he began to say some incoherent things.
“I believe there were ‘some forces’ at work on him. Because from the responses, it seemed that he came to his senses suddenly and showed remorse. Emmanuel neither smoked nor drank alcohol. I had taken him out on some occasions”.
The Itele Ota Division DPO, CSP Lukman Raheem, led detectives to the scene for the medical doctor’s arrest. The matter was later moved to the homicide section of the Ogun State Police Command headquarters, Abeokuta and charged to court.
For the Ogah family, it’s an awful end for Emmanuel despite his struggle in life and educational attainment and an additional traumatic experience they have to endure just five years after the killing of their mother.
