According to the boy’s father, Mr. Fred Ayogu,
a Lagos-based businessman, the younger Ayogu had returned to school for the
second semester in September last year with $5,000 meant for his tuition and
sundry fees. However, for very inexplicable reasons, the money was allegedly
collected from him for ‘safe keeping’ by Gweus, a 400-level music student. But,
up until the night of his murder, Ayogu was yet to pay his school fees because
his roommate allegedly refused to give the money back to him.
When Gweus was asked by the police why he
refused to hand the money over to Mr. Ayogu since he said he was only holding
it for ‘safe’ keeping, he reportedly answered that the money was no longer enough
to pay the 100 per cent school fees required by the university since, according
to him, Mr. Ayogu had earlier collected $600 from the $5,000 leaving a balance
of N4,400, “which is not enough to pay his school fees.” However, the Vice
Chancellor was said to have quickly put a lie to the claim when he ordered his
secretary to print out the fees for the session, whereupon it was discovered that
the total amount payable by 300-level Economics students for the session
amounted to exactly $4,400.
At this point, Gweus reportedly changed his
story, claiming that Ayogu later removed the whole money from where he Gweus
had kept it and that that was why the people he referred to as ‘they’ killed
him.
The police in Cape Coast are working on the
theory that Mr. Ayogu was killed by his attackers to prevent him from squealing
on them either to his parents or the school authorities. The slain student was
to have travelled back to Nigeria a day after his mother after he finally
summoned the courage to tell his parents why he was yet to pay his school fees,
more than five months after he returned to his school in Ghana.
In an interview with New Telegraph in Lagos, the elder Ayogu said the police in Ghana
had assured him that his son’s killers would be found and punished. He
expressed gratitude to the Nigerian High Commission in Accra for the
“expeditious manner in which they handled and are handling the case.”
“I can’t
thank the High Commission officials enough,” he said. “My escorts and I were
actually conveyed to the university and back to Accra in the High Commission’s
vehicle by the High Commission’s officials. They demonstrated a new Nigerian
resolve to ensure that no citizen is killed so carelessly again in a foreign
land or anywhere else for that matter, the way my son was killed by persons
acting in collusion with his roommate at the University of Cape Coast. I was
told that some Nigerians who were involved in the murder have since run back
home, but I am certain that the long arms of the law will catch them.”
“My son just lost his life so carelessly. He
was kind to a fault; he lent his own school fees to another person to pay his
own school fees and their gratitude was to murder him. It’s most unfair, a very
callous thing to do to a fellow human being.”
New
Telegraph learnt that the Senator representing Enugu North District where
Ayogu comes from, Senator Ayogu Eze has briefed the Senate and the Presidency
on the development. The Presidency is believed to have taken up the matter with
its Ghanaian counterpart, which, it was reliably gathered, has ordered the
police to leave no stone unturned in unmasking Godwin’s killers.
At the time
of this report, the House of Representative Committee on the Diaspora had
concluded plans to raise the matter on the floor of the House, its Chairman
Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa said yesterday.
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