Wife and aged parents of a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Olutope Oyekanmi Falode (43), have been plunged into unimaginable anxiety following the officer’s disappearance.

Family members of the missing DSP said the worst part of the whole drama was in not knowing whether the officer was alive or dead. Right now, their lives seem to be on pause. They cannot move forward.

The DSP is said to be attached to Interpol Section, Abuja. His wife, Titilayo Elizabeth Falode, and his father, Pa Samuel Iyiola Falode (77), have called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to help them in finding out Oyekanmi’s whereabouts. The DSP has been missing for two months.

The Abuja-based officer was said to have, on September 3, left Nigeria in company with three other persons for Gabon en-route Cameroon, to recover a stolen car traced to the country. After getting to Cameroon, the policemen appeared to have disappeared into thin air. Their phone lines were no longer going through. And since then, the whereabouts of the men are unknown.

His wife, Elizabeth, a primary school teacher and mother of four boys, residing at Alakia area of Ibadan, Oyo State, said her husband had been going on such journeys in the past, but had never disappeared like this, creating worry, anxiety and panic in his household.

She said: “I spoke with my husband till he got to Cameroon, but afterwards; his phone could no longer be reached. I frantically and repeatedly called, without success. A week later, I had to contact his Abuja office. When I called the office line, it was one Miss Gloria, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) that spoke with me. She said they heard from the policemen when they got to Cameroon on their way to Gabon, but that since then, they had not heard from them. She said they were also making efforts to trace them. She added that they were planning to go in search of my husband and others, but they have not been given approval by the Cameroonian Government to come in.”

Disclosing the mission that took her husband to Cameroon, Elizabeth said: “He told me that a vehicle was stolen from Nigeria and later traced to Gabon. Three officers, including Oyekanmi and a civilian, were detailed to go and recover the vehicle. The civilian among them was to drive the vehicle back. Anytime he travelled out of Nigeria, he would immediately buy a SIM card of that area within two or three days, to call home and to tell us where he was. It was strange in this case that he had not called for close to two months now.

Oyekanmi’s 77-year-old father is in a terrible condition. The retired chief typist with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Osun State, said: “I have not heard from Oyekanmi in the past two months contrary to his usual character. I used to call him and he does same regularly. What I heard last was that he was detailed with two other officers and a civilian to go to Gabon on an official assignment. Anytime he travels from Abuja to anywhere, he was always calling to tell me his whereabouts. Why did he travel this time and for this long and had been incommunicado?

“After calling his phone number several times without success, I had to send two of his brothers, Oluwayemi and Oluwatosin, to go to his place of work in Abuja to find out what is going on. They went and came back only to tell me that Oyekanmi’s bosses told them that they had no idea where my son and three others were. After that, a Deputy Superintendent of Police from Abuja, Lanre Bankole, came here to visit me. He said they were also trying to find out where my son and the others were. He said that they were planning to go to Cameroon to investigate what happened. He told me that it was when my son and others got to Cameroon and reported from there that those of them in Abuja heard last from them. He, however, added that the Cameroonian Government had not given them the approval to come. This confused me.”

The DSP’s mother, Madam Dorcas Mogbonjubola Falode, wept throughout her interview with our correspondent. Dorcas said it was customary for her son to call immediately he gets to any place of a new assignment.

She said: “He would even send pictures of wherever he was to his younger brother who stays here. My plea is that both President Buhari and the IGP should find my son because they are the ones that sent him on this errand. I suffered to bring him up. They shouldn’t allow my efforts to go be in vain.”

When the Force Public Relations Officer (FPPRO), DCP Jimoh Moshood was contacted to confirm the story, he did not pick his calls, also did not respond to the text message sent to him.

•Excerpted from New Telegraph report

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