A Lagos-based engineer, Mr. Lawrence Ameh Idoko, has been reportedly stabbed to death by his jealous and violent wife, Mrs. Folashade Bashira Idoko. The incident occurred at about 11pm on August 20 at Kosoko Street in the Ayetoro area of Oto-Awori Local Government Development Area.

Neighbours said Mr. Idoko’s murder climaxed several years of violent spousal abuse by the suspect. The last fatal incident was said to have happened on Sunday night when 32-year-old Mr. Idoko, who worked as a pipelines engineer with Greater Inspection and Industrial Services at Sango-Otta, Ogun State, was away for a week on an assignment at Ikorodu, Lagos, for his company. When he returned, his wife reportedly accused him of being involved in extra-marital affair and stabbed him in the leg with a sharp knife. “When his three-year-old son’s cries alerted neighbours, he had bled heavily. He died about an hour after he was rushed to the nearby New Ayetoro Medical Centre,” a source said.

According to a neighbour, Mrs. Blessing Olokpobri, Folashade’s violence was a well-known fact in the neighbourhood. She said: “There was hardly a day they didn’t have a fight whenever he came around, even on January 1st this year, when she went to drag him and stripped him naked from the beer parlour around here, and beat up the elderly neighbour. There was even a time she sliced his earlobes with a broken bottle and it had to be stitched.”

The landlord, Chief Gani Akanni, the Balogun of Ayetoro, who took the bleeding and dying Idoko to the hospital, recounted how he gave the couple quit notice early this year due to their incessant fights, but was begged by the other tenants into reconsidering his stance. He said: “There was a time I also took the woman to the police station because she vandalised my property after I locked up the tenants’ rooms for defaulting in payment of LAWMA (waste collection) bills. She went ahead to break the door. It is unfortunate because the husband is such a quiet and peaceful man.”

Folashade, who is currently in detention at the Ijaniki Police Station, is said to be an auxiliary nurse. The couple have two children, a three-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl.

Idoko hailed from Benue State while Folashade hails from Kwara State.

An aunt of the disease and a human rights activist, Betty Abah, reacting to the incident, said it was unfortunate that spousal abuse is still prevalent and that it continues to take a toll on partners, either male or female. She lamented: “My nephew, like many men and women who die daily in violent relationships, would have been alive had they fled such deadly arrangements in the name of marriage. We the family will ensure that justice is done, this is another young and promising life deliberately cut short and this wickedness will not go unreprimanded.”

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