From Molly Kilete, Abuja
A 35-year-old man who thought he was helping his friend at his time of need has been killed by him.
The deceased, Engineer Christopher Godwin, from Nassarawa State was approached by his friend, Sylvester Aghole, to lend him some money to enable him perform his traditional marriage and church wedding rites last year.
As a good Samaritan who wants the best for his friend on his special day, he gave him the sum of N500,000, which was the total amount requested by his friend, which he too promised to pay back shortly affer the wedding.
But months after the wedding, Mr Aghole did not make any move to fulfil his promise despite several pleas from Engineer Godwin.
Not wanting the money issue to become a barrier in their friendship, Godwin decided to forget the issue and not to talk about the money again.
Their friendship continued as usual, but unknown to the engineer, his friend Aghole had planned to kill him, but pretended as if all was well in their friendship.
To get his evil act perpetrated, Aghole got the services of a commercial motorcycle operator and his gang to kill his friend on an agreed date.
And the agreed fateful day happened to be the wedding ceremony of his another friend, which also held in Nassarawa State.
Godwin had picked his evil friend at his place from where they proceeded to the venue of the wedding ceremony.
Not knowing that the day was going to be his last day on earth, they proceeded for the reception after the wedding and before he knew what was happening, some Okada riders overtook him, stopped him, dragged him out of his vehicle and took him to the bush.
Few minutes after they kidnapped him, he was murdered in cold blood and his body dumped inside the bush.
Satisfied that his mission has been accomplished, his friend Aghole went home to enjoy the loot they found in the deceased car.
Days after the gruesome murder, villagers found Engineer Godwin’s body in the bush and alerted the police who moved it to the mortuary and commenced investigation.
During investigation, it was discovered that the last person seen with Godwin, was his friend Agbole.
He was immediately arrested and taken into custody. During interrogation, the suspect confessed to the crime and named his accomplices who were promptly arrested by the police.
In this interview, Aghole, now a suspect, told Sunday Sun, that he has regretted killing his friend, saying that he did so because of the huge amount of money he saw inside the dashboard of his car.
The suspect who claimed to be a 300-Level undergraduate of the University of Jos, said that though the deceased had been nice to him, he needed the money to survive.
He spoke to Sunday Sun on how he carried out the wicked act.
“My name is Sylvester Aghole, I am from Nassarawa State. I am a 300 Level student of the University of Jos, studying psychology. Engineer Godwin was my friend and he has been nice to me. When I was about to get married, I approached him and begged him to borrowed me some money, N500,000, to enable me prepare for my wedding. I told him that I will pay him back the money after the wedding and he gave it to me without looking back.
“With the money, I was able to hold a successful wedding ceremony. But after the wedding, I was not able to raise the money to pay him as I promised him. Even though he asked me about it a few times, he did not talk about it again
“So, one day as we were going for a friend’s wedding, I saw plenty of money in the dashboard of his vehicle and I wanted to have it and didn’t know how to go about it. So, I hired the services of one Samuel Emmanuel, an Okada rider to help to kidnap him. My intention was to kidnap and not to kill him, but along the line he was killed and I am not happy about it.”
On his part, Samuel Emmanuel, who claimed that he was a friend to Aghole, disclosed that Aghole married one of his sisters and that he lives in the same area with his mother.
He said that he really didn’t know the deceased that much until Aghole approached him that he had a job for him.
According to him, Aghole had told him to hire the services of other people to ensure a smooth operation.
Hear him: “My name is Samuel Emmanuel, I am an Okada rider from Nassarawa State. I can say Sylvester is my good friend. I live in the same area with his mother and he is married to one of my sisters. Sylvester approached me to tell me that he had a job for me, but that if I cannot do it I should look for people that can do it for him. I asked him the kind of job and he told me he wanted us to kidnap his friend, so I told him I cannot do it alone that I will get other people to work with me. So, we went ahead and kidnapped the man and took him inside the bush. While in the bush, he struggled with us and somehow he got killed and we dumped his body and ran away.”