Located in the highbrow area of Lagos, Lekki precisely, the management of Dowen College Lagos gave a lame and watery explanation about the death of Sylvester Oromoni.
The management and owner of Dowen College Lagos, Dr. Olumide Phillips had claimed in a statement that one of the school’s hostel officials had informed them on November 21 that Oromoni was injured while playing football with his colleagues.
Perhaps, the school where singer, Lami Philips, is the Director of student and external affairs, thought their side of the story would be accepted hook, line, and sinker. Unknown to the management, the situation was about to escalate and explode.
On December 1, 2021, a cousin to Sylvester Oromoni, who is the son of the Delta State environmental task force chairman, Mr. Sylvester Oromoni, took to social media to debunk the school’s statement that he was injured while playing football. Note that Sylvester had died on 30 November after a week of ill-health.
The cousin with the name Perrie @perrisonoromoni on Twitter tweeted in a series of different tweets: “This is my 12 years old cousin that was beaten to death at a school that cost over 1 million naira. Dowen College is a disgrace. He mentioned 5 names before passing yesterday. They tried to put him in a cult, he refused and they killed him. Secondary school o. They called my uncle that he got injured playing football. Reaching the hospital it was confirmed that he was being bullied and beaten up causing internal damages.“
The five names Oromoni mentioned before he died are Anslem Temile (related to singer Omawumi according to Gistlovers Blog), Michael Kashamu (son of late Senator, Buruji Kashamu), Benjamin Favour, Edward Brown and Agboro Emmanuel.
Perrie went further to share the Dowen College death video and the final moments of Oromoni.
Thanks to social media which brought the death to everyone’s attention, Lagos State Government has shut down Dowen College, the hashtag #JusticeForSylvester is trending and many celebrities/Influencers including Davido, Mr. Macaroni, Tonto Dikeh, and Kanayo O. Kanayo among others are demanding justice for Sylvester.
The flipside of this is that some of the boys, if not all of them, have been flown out of the country and for now no arrest has been made.
Despite the culpability and denial of Dowen College that there was no cultism in the school and the availability of video evidence of the culprit’s names being mentioned, the five boys have cases to answer according to Attorney, Modupe Odele.
The existence of social media has again proven its usefulness despite the government of Nigeria’s efforts to suppress it. This Dowen College death has shown that nothing can be hidden and no coverup can hold for long.
Now that the death of Sylvester Oromoni is the talk of the town, we are anxious to see what happens next. This is because sadly, there have been similar cases and after much social media outrage, no succour for the families of the deceased. We hope this won’t be the case here.
