(David Imoh. Photo by Sahara Reports)
The widow of slain Lagos sound engineer, David Imoh, has said that although justice has finally been served four years after her husband was lynched and set ablaze by a mob over a disputed N100 balance, no court judgment can heal the pain of losing him or restore the life they had planned together.
Speaking exclusively to an online news platform on Tuesday night, hours after a Lagos State High Court sentenced three of the six convicts to d£ath by hanging for their roles in the gruesome k!lling, Bolu described the judgment as a moment of conflicting emotions marked by relief, grief and painful memories.
“My first reaction: It was actually a mixed feeling because my head was just bowed. I kept shaking my head. I kept having flashbacks of him,” she said.
She revealed that despite the passage of four years, she still sometimes struggles to accept that her husband is gone.
“Because at times I just feel like maybe he travelled and will come back one day. As I feel at times, till today, I just have that mixed feeling still.”
Reflecting on the verdict, Bolu said she remained committed to attending every court sitting throughout the lengthy trial, even though she never knew what the final outcome would be.
“Yes, after four years, justice has been rightly served. I didn’t really know what the outcome was going to be, but I just knew I kept coming.
Even if this is all I could do for him by coming to court, I made up my mind I was going to come with him.”
She said the moment Justice I.O. Harrison delivered the judgment brought back the devastating reality that her husband had been permanently taken away from their family.
“The emotions that came through my head, through my mind as the judgment was delivered were pain and bitterness,” she said.
“The pain was that this guy is gone. Why would he be k!lled for nothing? For nothing.”
According to her, the thought that haunted her throughout the day was the irreversible damage caused by what she described as a senseless altercation.
“Especially when I was coming there today, everything that just kept ringing in my head was that somebody just made me a widow, made my children fatherless. For what?” she asked.
“What could have been resolved amicably? What was the quarrel all about? One that didn’t even make sense.”
Holding back tears, Bolu insisted that no one deserved to die in the brutal manner her husband was k!lled.
“It’s not fair. Nobody deserved to die like this. Nobody. Nobody deserved to die like this.”
Although the judgment ended one of Nigeria’s most notorious mob justice cases, she admitted that it had not brought the emotional closure many people expected.
“It didn’t lead to any sense of closure. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I just have faith in him, that’s all. That’s all I can say.”
Bolu’s latest emotional remarks come barely hours after a dramatic scene unfolded inside the courtroom when one of the condemned convicts allegedly attempted suicide immediately after the d£ath sentence was pronounced.
As earlier reported by the online news platform, the convict reportedly produced a razor blade, slashed his wrist and attempted to cut his throat before prison officials and police officers overpowered him and rushed him to hospital for treatment.
Justice Harrison had directed that the convict be kept alive to serve the sentence imposed by the court.
In an earlier exclusive interview with the online news platform, Bolu described her late husband as a peaceful, hardworking man whose greatest dream was to provide a better life for his family.
She recalled that Imoh, whom she fondly called “Timmy,” was preparing to relocate to Canada just months before he was k!lled.
According to her, the family had planned for him to travel first before she and their two children joined him later. She also revealed that her husband dreamed of establishing his own mechanic workshop with an attached car wash and building a home for the family, dreams that died with him.
Imoh, a 37-year-old sound engineer with Legacy360 Band, was brutally beaten and set ablaze on Admiralty Way in Lekki Phase 1, Lagos, in May 2022 after a disagreement over a N100 balance with a commercial motorcyclist escalated into mob violence.
Two of his colleagues, saxophonist Francis Olatunji and keyboardist Philip Balogun, also sustained serious injuries during the att@ck.
On Tuesday, the Lagos State High Court convicted all six defendants involved in the case on various charges.
Three were sentenced to d£ath by hanging after being found guilty of conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and murder.
Two others were sentenced to 11 years and two months imprisonment each for conspiracy to murder and causing grievous bodily harm, while the sixth defendant was sentenced to five years and six months imprisonment for inflicting grievous bodily harm.