The long arm of the law seems to have no time to waste in catching up with the main suspect in the killing of Prof Simon Akpakwu of the Federal University, Kashere in Gombe State in northeastern Nigeria early last Friday. Although the police have not spoken authoritatively, Intervention understands the police which has been tracking Prof Akpakwu’s driver through the late professor’s telephone line caught up with him earlier in Jos today where he was obviously trying to sell the car he made away with. He was reportedly using the telephone line to make calls and send text messages, either as a diversionary strategy or as a result of confusion engulfing him after the unthinkable act.
Another view of the late Prof
Idris, IG of Police: Commendable speed in this case but could we start hearing more of the bursting rather than arrests after mission accomplished?
It was understood that, by Monday, yesterday, the Police had already tracked the signals to a section of Jos where he was negotiating sale of the car. Interestingly, the driver whose only known name at the moment is John hails from Ugboju, one of the districts in Idomaland, meaning he shares same ethnic identity with his professor victim. The driver has been the main suspect immediately the help seekers taking their CV to Prof Akpakwu last Friday morning discovered his lifeless body but positioned on a chair to look like he was watching television. Not only did the suspect was unreachable on his phone that morning, he was also not seen in his house.
Officials, colleagues, doctors and other sympathisers, however, cautioned against narrowing complicity to the suspected driver although the logic of the owl crying last night and the child dying the following morning implicated him thickly. With this swift arrest, the world might soon be obliged insights why the driver might have decided to take someone’s life and how he was able to accomplish it without any intervening variables stopping him in his track.
This is a case the world has not heard the last of it yet, partly because of the communities of interest to which the late Prof Akpakwu belonged: the cultural community, the academic community, the community of professors, at home and abroad and the social circle. Of course, his death, like that of several others, raises the question of how easy people kill nowadays without any intervening variables – good nieghbours, police patrol tem, local vigilante, communal intelligence network, etc – disrupting such attempts, suggesting a society deeply in decay because if a man of ideas such as a professor is vulnerable to the machinations of any self-righteous fellow, then who can talk of security for lesser mortals?
