Sequel to a video recorded at the Avista Beach Resort Ogombo, where the author could be heard accusing the management of the resort as being complicit in the disappearance of his missing brother before security personnel attached to the establishment forcefully cut short the recording session, new facts have emerged as to the true order of events which has now culminated in the eventual discovery of the missing person’s mutilated corpse with some vital organs missing at a location not too distant from the resort.
According to Mr. Lawrence Olaleye, a real Estate dealer and author of the said video who narrated the true account to DASCENARIO via a telephone conversation, it had taken the intervention of the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, CP Fayoade, to prevent the resultant investigation from being swept under the rug after an initial visit by one Supol Chima of the Ogombo Police Station had resulted in the detention of several youths of the church on retreat and neither of the resort staff’s nor its management’s.
Speaking in tortured tones, the bereaved brother of the victim said Oriyomi Damilola Remilekun, the 37-year old prophet of the Celestial Church of Christ, Shogbamu Parish, Ifako, Gbagada, Lagos, and father of a young boy, had mysteriously disappeared between the Avista Beach Resort and the resort car park during the course of their Valentine youth retreat on Saturday 17th February, 2024.Being a leader of the church youths, Damilola had been tasked with the responsibility of overseeing the coordination of the annual retreat which had gone well till he suddenly disappeared as the group was on the verge of returning home.
Olaleye said the nightmarish ordeal began when he received a distress call from Maria, late Prophet Damilola’s girlfriend, to inform him that the latter couldn’t be found despite being the one who had ordered all the youths off the beach around 9pm on the fateful day to head back to the car park as they were billed to return back to Gbagada on the same day.
After searching everywhere for him to no avail for hours, the youths had to leave as it was well into the wee hours of the next morning. It was that same Sunday that Olaleye returned to Avista Beach Resort with the youths to record the viral video and to file a missing person’s complaint at the Ogombo Police Station where Supol Chima, the IPO assigned to the case, accompanied them back to the resort. He said what surprised him and the others was that when they got back to the resort, the Manager had without any show of empathy with the grave situation, gone ahead to accuse them of disrupting his business, and thereafter, switched the conversation between him and Supol Chima to Igbo language so that they will not be privy to what was being discussed. After this, SUPOL Chima took them back to the station and detained all the 15 youths as suspects with the exclusion of anyone from the resort.
On Monday 19th February, Olaleye said he was summoned by some of the people that were helping to search and comb the beach shores to Mopo Village, which is a few kilometers away from Barracuda Beach, to inspect a corpse that was found and which unfortunately turned out to be that of his missing brother. He also asserted that the state of the mutilated body and missing body part left no iota of doubt in his mind that the late Prophet Damilola had been murdered for ritual purposes. However, late Damilola’s corpse could not be moved away till the Baale of Mopo Village was contacted based on some traditional cleansing rites that had to be performed in such matters. The corpse was eventually taken to IDH mortuary on the morning of Tuesday, 20th February.
Sensing foul play in the making, Olaleye said he contacted the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, and with his intervention, the case was transferred from Ogombo Police Station, to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, where the 15 youths and Avista Resort and Beach manager were invited. It was at Panti that the Youths were released on bail, while the Avista Resort Manager was detained.
According to Olaleye, he was again shocked to the marrows that Wednesday when the Police drama recommenced in the person of one SUPOL Ahmed, a team lead in the station, who, after saying the victim’s family were also required to give a statement as a family, went ahead to blame him for making the viral video which, according to the officer, had begun to affect the other party’s business and also threatened him that he could be sued for character assassination.
Olaleye said on returning back to the station on Thursday 22nd February, SUPOL Ahmed recanted on his earlier narrative, alluding his earlier statements to the sentiments expressed by the Resort’s Lawyers on a prior visitation and then took him to the IPO, Inspector Sola, where, same SUPOL Ahmed then asked him what they wanted on the case, in the hope of making a bargain, but according to Olaleye, he blatantly refused any negotiation and expressed the family’s desire to see justice done on the matter and to clear his late brother’s image as erroneously portrayed by false accounts given in publications and reports made by Punch, Instablog and BBC Yoruba that the young prophet had drowned.
He also said the family have contacted their lawyers to address the situation.
