TELL Magazine

Osobase Omo-Iyoha, a Benin-based lawyer who was abducted May 9, 2020 in Benin City has been found dead. Omo-Iyoha was declared missing on the fateful day after he was severely beaten near an open bar in the Aduwawa area of the state capital and taken away in a vehicle by his assailants.

The deceased reportedly intervened in a quarrel between two feuding parties when his attackers, identified as children of a Benin chief priest, Nosakhare Osadolor, popularly called Afro, pounced on him, beat him into pulp, and dragged him into their vehicle.

One Osasu Osadolor, one of Afro’s sons, and five others fingered in the abduction, were later arrested while the search for the young lawyer was on.

They however on Tuesday led the police to the spot in a bush where they buried the body. At the time of this report, men of Edo State Police Command and pathologists were exhuming the remains.

The state branch of the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, and Civil Society Organisations, CSOs had been on top of the matter since the abduction of one of their own. They had mounted pressure on the state police command, and the Inspector General of Police to fish out Omo-Iyoha’s abductors.

At a press conference May 19, the branch chairman of the NBA, Collins Ogiegbaen, tasked the IG’s Rapid Response Team led by Abba Kyari, a deputy commissioner of police to carry out a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the kidnap and suspected murder of Omo-Iyoha.