Reactions Trail Opeyemi’s Suicide, Oko Residents Put Into Deep Mourning

By Yusuf Adua

Following the unsavory death of Abolarinwa Opeyemi, a 13-year old JSS2 student who reportedly took his own life in Oko, Ogbomoso, on Tuesday, News Live Nigeria felt the pulse of relevant stakeholders on ways to prevent this misdemeanor.

Abolarinwa Opeyemi was a JSS2 student of Muslim Comprehensive High School (MCHS), Oko, Ogbomoso, Oyo state. He was believed to have committed suicide a day earlier while still in his school uniform without leaving any note or giving any warning signal beforehand.

News Live Nigeria gathered that Opeyemi was engaged in a rancorous misunderstanding with his mother over cashew nuts sale, which led to his mother, described as a stonehearted disciplinarian, threatening to deal with him after returning from school.

In an exclusive interview with News Live Nigeria, the Grand Chief Imam of Ogbomoso land, Alhaji Talha Yunus Olusina Ayilara expressed shock over the weirdness of the incident but maintained that the mishap is multidimensional and must be treated as such.

“To me, this is a global problem which is bound to happen considering the rate of poverty and the decline mental training of our wards. To get this kind of menace out of the board, we need to give our children hands-on moral teaching from the right tutelage.”

Imam Ayilara further charged parents to adopt a good parenting style devoid of cruelty and harshness; instead, they should grom their offspring with love and care.

He did underline the importance of counseling on children and the need to regularly keep close tabs on them.

Similarly, an Ogbomoso based guidance counselor, Mrs. Bisola Rotimi, highlighted the importance of lessening empty threats on the children, particularly teenagers, because they react awkwardly to threats and torture at that age.

“Opeyemi’s case is just one of the unfortunate cases we have that should not have happened. My candid advice to parents is to unscrew the bolts of threats on their children because these kids are growing more reactionary than ever before”, Mrs. Rotimi added.

From a social worker’s perspective, Mr. Yunus Tunde Abdulkareem opined that though the incident was heartbreaking, its cause is multifaceted and could be pinned on the stress and scourges of life and not poverty in wholesome.

Responding to questions from News Live Nigeria, Mr. Abdulkareem felt strongly that “our social values and their agents are paling into insignificance.” Therefore, until these thresholds are reawakened, our society is bound to combat similar social issues or even worse.

“Corporal punishment is part of our heritage in this part of the world, and we cannot undermine how it had helped many of us growing up. The exposure of our children to the social space, peer pressure, and quest for material things at tender age need to be regulated amongst our teenagers”, he proffered.

According to the teacher of the diseased who communicated our correspondent under the condition of anonymity, the mother allegedly threatened to exert more punishment on the boy upon his return from school and what she had done to him before he set out to learn.

Opeyemi was neither present in class nor marked the class attendance but reportedly told his friends who saw him in school on Monday morning that he only came to get something.

A neighbour to the diseased (name withheld) told News Live Nigeria that “it is painful everyone had to look for this boy. We all thought he had gone to sleep in a friend’s house to escape the punishment, but his mother is a profusely strict torturer, to be honest”.

After the boy’s body was discovered with a rope hung from a short tree behind a block of classrooms in the school, some residents in the area apportioned the blame of Opeyemi’s untimely death on the notorious habit of heaping curses and abuses on him by the mother which made the boy found life uninteresting.

Another resident added that “it is worrisome to understand how Opeyemi knew about suicide, but his mother is always toxic with all her children.”

Pastor Boladale Amos Ogunyemi wished Abolarinwa Opeyemi an eternal rest but noted that high-handedness should not be a prompter to suicide because it goes against ethical, moral, religious, and behavioural judgment.

The Nigerian police have commenced investigation on the matter. News Live Nigeria will keep you abreast of the latest information on the sad incident.