Urueye’s family show grief after losing Stephen

Following the gruesome murder of Stephen Urueye, a resident medical doctor at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi Araba, by some hoodlums on Thursday evening, sympathisers of all kinds have been trooping in to commiserate with the household.

Urueye was on housemanship at the hospital and was to finish the programme in December 2019 when the incident happened.

The 25-year-old was reportedly seeing off a friend, who visited him at his lodge around 9:00pm when he was attacked by the hoodlums along the Canal area – a route near the campus said to be notorious for robbery attacks.

Our correspondent gathered that the assailants stabbed him in the thigh while trying to dispossess him of his phone and ATM card and left him for dead.

He was said to have been rushed to the emergency section of the teaching hospital by passersby, who saw him groaning with pains at the scene of the attack.

The young man died at the hospital in the early hours of Friday, throwing his family, friends and colleagues into deep mourning.

His distraught mother, Aderonke, and siblings were inconsolable when our correspondent visited the family on Friday afternoon.

Rolling on the floor as those around made spirited efforts to console her, the woman cried profusely, singing songs of worship to God in the process. When she finally found her voice, the words that she uttered broke the heart.

“Stephen was a covenant child,” she said. “I gave birth to him at an old age. I went through hell during his delivery. It was through a Caesarean Section.

“As my only son, I had hoped he would get married and live with me with his wife and children. Death should have taken me instead of my only son,” she added painfully.

Pausing for a few minutes and rolling on the floor again, the heartbroken woman let out her pain the more. The entire room was filled with grief.

“My son was a gentle boy. Only a few people knew him on the street where we live because he was easy-going.

“I want to see the killers of my son and ask them what I did to deserve this type of thing from them,” she said.

There was confusion around 8:00pm when the mother of the victim saw the news of her son’s death on television. The sight of his photograph forced a stream of tears down her cheek. She soon passed out, leaving everyone in the living room panicky. It took the intervention of sympathisers to revive her.

Elder sister to the deceased, Amina, told our correspondent that her brother had attended the convocation of his friends on Wednesday before he was gruesomely murdered the next day.

Fighting back tears, she said she wished Urueye was alive even if it meant losing one of his legs after that attack.

“He was inducted last December and had commenced his housemanship. He was supposed to finish in December 2019.

“He took the picture being circulated on the social media during his induction. He was a gentle and respectful brother. He was God-loving and brilliant. We will miss him a lot,” she said.

Another sister of the victim, Memunat, said she chatted with him some hours before the incident, adding that she would miss him sorely.

“We were very close. We still chatted yesterday (Thursday). He wished to be a prominent doctor but all of that dream is gone now,” she said.

In the wake of the incident, colleagues of the deceased and hundreds of students trooped out on Friday to protest against the lack of security around the campus.

They lamented that the scene of the incident had become a hot spot for years, with many students falling victim to robbery attacks.

The Student Union President, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Ayo Agbaje, said Urueye’s death prompted his colleagues and undergraduates to stage the protest.

“There have been incidents like stabbing and beating of undergraduates in the past, but we have not lost a life before.

“Urueye’s death was quite tremendous and almost all the students in the school was around for the march. Doctors and students are not a danger to them, so they should stop attacking us,” he said.

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Bala Elkana, in a statement said two suspects had been arrested in connection with the incident, adding that the state’s Commissioner of Police, Zubairu Mu’azu, had directed that the case be transferred to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Panti, for further investigation.