From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Okaka, in Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, was unusually busy on Friday, July 29, 2022. A crowd gathered in front of a two-bedroom apartment waiting for the police. A woman lay on the floor wailing and muttering: “Please, my daughter, don’t die, don’t die. Please, don’t die.”
When the police entered the apartment, the woman, identified as the mother of Kate Ogwoh, wailed uncontrollably. As the law officers exhumed the body of her 25-year-old daughter, she began to shout: “Help me wake Kate. Please, wake her up.”
Unfortunately, Kate could not wake up. She was allegedly killed the previous day by Joseph Fekala, her friend’s elder brother, during an argument over the N50,000 Kate transferred to his account.
The crowd became emotional when the body of Kate was carried into the police van and residents jostled to catch a glimpse of the tall, lanky Felaka as the police led him away in handcuffs. Immediately, the story spread like wildfire in Yenagoa that another Yahoo-boy had been caught after burying his girlfriend in his room. Another version of the story was that the suspect was a youth pastor at Christ Embassy, which was a smokescreen to cover his evil deeds.
In a statement to confirm the incident, the police public relations officer in the state, SP Asinim Butswat, said: “Joseph Fekala, 27 years, of Ikibiri Community, but residing at Okaka, strangled one Kate Ogwoh, 26 years, to death on July 28, 2022. He buried the deceased in a shallow grave in his bedroom.
“The suspect was arrested following a tipoff by neighbours on July 29, 2022, at about 0800 hours. He is being detained at the State Criminal investigation Department. Investigation is ongoing.”
However, Fekala, in an interview at the Bayelsa State Police Command headquarters, denied being a Yahoo-boy, ritualist and pastor. According to him, he used to be into forex trading, until he got a job with an oil company in Port Harcourt.
The suspect, who evaded questions about the name of the firm where he worked, also denied having any romantic relationship with the deceased, who moved into his two-bed apartment. According to him, it was the deceased who came to meet him to help her trade in forex.
He said: “I used to work in an oil and gas servicing company in Port Harcourt as admin support. On July 1, I came to Bayelsa to carry out some maintenance work in my house because Kate met me in February that she needed somewhere to stay, based on the fact that the person she wanted to go and stay with in Lagos deceived her and she needed a place to stay for about four months before going back to Lagos. I stay in a two-bedroom flat and she said she had asked my sister, who is her friend, for permission to stay in my place.
“I told her, since my younger sister said she could come, then she should come and stay. I stay more often in Port Harcourt but I do come to Yenagoa occasionally to do some maintenance in the house. So, on July 1, when I came, she met me and told me that she wanted to trade (forex) because back then in 2020 she knew that I was trading.”
The suspect said he told her that the only thing he could do was to teach her to trade by herself, but the deceased got his account details and transferred N50,000 to him.
“I asked her what it was for and she said I should trade for her. After much persuasion, I asked her how much she was expecting, she said she was expecting N20,000 monthly for five months. I told her no bank or financial institution could do that for her, that it was not a miracle.
“I told her to send me her account details so I could make a refund after five working days. But some things came up so that I couldn’t make it and she started sending messages to my colleagues in my office that I was a scammer and fraudster, that I was this and that, and this was a job I just started recently. I didn’t want the thing to escalate. I tried to calm her down on the phone, saying that it was not something I could explain over the phone, that I would come so we could talk one on one.”
Fekala, who claimed he tried to resolve the problem with the deceased, said efforts to make her reason with him were futile, as she demanded interest on the N50,000 given to him.
“I told her to give me until the end of the month and I would pay her back with N5,000 interest, but she said she didn’t want the N5,000 that she wanted an interest of N20,000, that N5,000 interest was nothing. I said if I had to give her N20,000 interest then it would be the exact day in August, but she was still raising her voice, that she would deal with me, that her aunty was a police officer and all that.”
According to Fekala, things turned ugly when he and the deceased got physical, leading to screaming and her eventual death.
“She was pushing me and shoving me and I pushed her back and she fell on the bed in a sitting position. She was trying to outsmart me and was screaming for help and trying to talk to a lady outside.
“I quickly rushed to her and tried to close her mouth as she was calling for help but she bit my hand. We started struggling from the bed to the ground so my hand held her neck tight until she passed away. I choked her by holding her neck. It was not up to a minute that I held her neck before she gave up the ghost,” he said.
According to him, on realising that he had murdered someone, he went outside to clear his head and the thought came to him to bury her in the house.
“As I was walking, a thought came to me that I should just bury the body, maybe people would not be aware. I came back to the house at night because this happened in the morning of July 28. I borrowed a shovel and looked for a section in the room that was not tiled and dug it and buried her in the night. I couldn’t sleep until 3am,” he said.
However, Kate’s blood cried for justice and reports said she appeared to her mother and said that Fekala had killed her, demanding that she should expose the killer.
“The woman said it was as if she was in a trance as her daughter told her that she had been killed and that she should visit Fekala’s house to expose him,” a source said.
Residents of the area said the moment the mother of the deceased came in, she raised the alarm, which drew neighbours’ attention and the police were called.
Now that the deed has been done, Fekala is regretting his actions, realising that his remaining years may be spent behind bars, if not sentenced to death.
“I feel very bad about it because this is a simple thing that I could have prevented by firstly not accepting her to stay and, secondly, sticking to my principle of not accepting finance. Yet I broke my principle by allowing someone to come and stay with me, accepting to trade for someone. I feel very sorry about it now,” he lamented.