A 22-year old man, whose name was given as Godfrey living with his elder brother, Peter, at 10, Nkese Effiong in Calabar South, has allegedly committed suicide following ill-treatment by his elder brother.
Godfrey, who hailed from Ababene in Obubra Local Government Area of Cross River State, Southsouth Nigeria, was staying with his brother in his one-room apartment where the incident happened.
“Peter was ill-treating him so much that he never allowed him to go to school and the boy had to resort to doing menial jobs and often he never gave him food to eat,” a source in the compound said.
According to the source, last Sunday, Godfrey came back home in the night from a church service and called on the brother to open the door for him but he would not.
“It was after a long period that Peter opened the door to allow him in and when he got in there was no food for him and he had to soak garri in a plate and as he stepped out to buy some sugar to add to the garri, the brother shut the door again,” our source said.
According to her, when the young man came back from buying sugar, he knocked repeatedly for Peter to open the door to enable him take the garri but his brother refused to open the door.
“He went to the next compound to call on his neighbour to come and appeal to Peter to open the door for him but his brother refused.”
She said it was perhaps the frustration that made the young man get up from where he slept outside and go into the bathroom used by all the tenants in the house to commit suicide.
“He used his belt as a noose with which he hanged himself to the roof of the bathroom,” our source said.
The body of the young man was discovered the following morning dangling from the roof of the bathroom.
“A tenant went there at about 2 a.m. to ease himself and noticed that somebody was inside and after waiting for some time and the person did not come out. He urinated on the wall of the toilet and went away.
“It was at about 6 a.m. when people went there to take their bath that they saw the young man hanging from the roof,” said our source.
The landlady, Mrs. Arit Effiong, said she had to ensure that the compound is cleansed and had to ask Peter to perform some rituals before “taking the corpse away”.
According to her, “suicide is a taboo and the ritual for cleansing the house required a dog and two chickens. The man had to buy those animals for the ritual before taking the corpse away.”
She said the herbalist who performed the ritual for the cleansing of the compound collected N20,000 which Peter had to pay before he was allowed to take the body to his village.