There have been widespread reactions to the recent death of Timothy Adegoke, an executive MBA student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, Osun State, at the Hilton Hotels (Honours), Ile-Ife. The owner of the hotel, renowned educationist and businessman, Dr. Rahman Adegoke Adedoyin and other accused persons in the incident are currently under investigation and would soon be arraigned in an Osun court. Adedoyin’s wife and founder of Chapel of Blessings Evangelical Ministry International, Prophetess (Mrs) Iyabo Oluwafunmilayo Adedoyin, speaks on the incident in this interview with GBENGA ADERANTI.
Your husband is one of the people accused of having a hand in the death of Timothy Adegoke at the Hilton Hotels (Honours) owned by him. What is your take on the allegation?
As a mother, let me first sympathise with Timothy Adegoke’s family. The whole incident is very unfortunate and we are sad. Everybody will die one day, one time and somewhere. He was alleged to have lodged at Hilton Hotels (Honours) Ile-Ife which is one of the arms of my husband’s businesses in Ife. I can categorically tell you that my husband was not at Hilton Hotel on the said night.
How do you feel about the whole incident?
Like I said before, I feel very sad that such an incident was alleged to have occurred at one of my husband’s hotels. This is the first time something like this would happen since he ventured into the hospitality business about 21 years ago. To me, the whole thing looks like a bad dream. Some social media reports alleged that your husband must have killed him for money rituals…
My husband did not kill Timothy Adegoke or send anyone to kill him. I’m certain of this and I strongly believe that his innocence will be established in court in the course of his trial. I have been married to my husband for close to 40 years. He is a devout Muslim, and I can confidently tell you that in all the years we have been together, he has never been involved in anything fetish or ritual. His enemies capitalised on what happened at Hilton Hotels (Honours), Ife to use the bloggers who specialise in destroying people’s reputation to make money to smear his image. They took advantage of the sad incident at Hilton Honours.
All their evil plans and machinations will fail unless he was the one that killed the late Timothy Adegoke. Some of the dismissed employees of his establishments, some enemies within Ife community who have an axe to grind with him and are envious of his successes, took advantage of what happened to bastardise his name.
But he was charged with unlawful interference with a dead body and tampering with CCTV cameras, among other offences…
These are mere allegations, and I believe that the court will vindicate him at the end of the day. How can someone who was not at the scene of an incident tamper with anything at the scene? My husband is a business man and a renowned educationist with several tertiary institutions, among many other businesses. He visits each of his businesses occasionally like a tourist. He has his personal office in the house and holds most of his meetings and other official engagements in the house. He hardly spends up to an hour whenever he visits any of his businesses. So, my husband was not there when the incident happened and has not been there ever since.
Money rituals are lies and machinations of the devil. It is complete deceit, and it is unfortunate that in this part of the world, people view rich people as ritual killers. It is out of sheer ignorance that uninformed people refer to successful individuals as ritual killers. We are leaving this for the courts to determine. Someone who has five thriving tertiary institutions and charges about half a million naira per year on each of about 5, 000 students in one of them is by all standards already very comfortable.
The recognition and popularity given to money rituals in our society, especially those in the film industry, the bloggers and other media has turned the feeble-minded youths and adults alike into traders in human parts as means of getting rich quickly. It is very unfortunate. The average person nowadays believes he can only be rich through money rituals. How many foreign films have you seen attributing riches to money rituals? Films in Africa will not sell unless you introduce ritualism into it.
The late Timothy Adegoke was said to have paid the hotel fees into a private account. Why?
This is quite unfortunate if proven to be true. If that is the case, I believe he must have been misled by the staff to do that as that was wrong. Hotel business is not the best when the owner is not present to oversee things.
Your husband said the late Timothy’s stay at Hilton Hotel (Honours), Ile-Ife was illegal. But he slept there?
He didn’t say it was illegal. He only said that the mode of payment was wrong, as it could not be traced initially in the records of the company.
Your husband has been in custody for a while now. Could it be that the police know something that the rest of us we don’t?
The police concentrated on him, investigating money ritualism as alleged by Facebook posts instead of investigating the cause of the death of Timothy Adegoke. When the whole thing started, some bloggers said Adedoyin had cut the body into pieces for rituals, but It was the local authority that buried Timothy Adegoke where it was dumped. The police invited Timothy Adegoke’s family. They checked the body in the presence of press men and all agreed that all the body parts were intact.
The corpse was taken to Osun State University Teaching Hospital Complex in Osogbo for autopsy. Before the autopsy, the police called the government pathologist, asked the family of the late Timothy to bring their own pathologist and asked our family to bring ours too. The police did excellently well.
After the autopsy, one of the professors said that Timothy died of trauma; the other said that the cause of death could not be ascertained. The fact remains that he died and my husband’s hand is not in his death. But I am not happy that he died, because I am a mother.
Are you hopeful that police investigation will vindicate your husband?
I am not in the position to speak on behalf of the police. But I believe that with the arraignment of the suspects before the FCT High Court, investigation is deemed to have been concluded.
(The Nation)
