News

Wife Sets Husband Ablaze Over Valentine Outing

Published

10 years ago

March 1, 2015

A commercial bus operator, Mr. Abimbola Olusegun, is now on danger list at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Ado- Ekiti, where he is receiving treatment for severe burns to his body after he was set ablaze by his wife, Bukola, on February 14, this year. It was gathered that Abimbola incurred the wrath of his wife over his alleged refusal to take her out on Valentine’s Day.
IOlusegun, an indigene of Ado-Ekiti, who lives in Idolofin area of the town, had returned home at about 6pm on the said day to meet his wife fuming over his failure to take her out on Lovers’ Day.
Neighbours said they heard the couple exchanging hot words before tragedy struck. A neighbour, who craved anonymity, said: “It was around midnight that the husband suddenly ran out from his apartment, crying for help.
He raised the alarm that his wife had set him ablaze. He was burning and was battling with the fire his wife had put on him. We had to rush out to rescue him by quickly getting water and pouring it on his body. But for the prompt intervention of some of us, he would have been burnt to ashes.
“He was thereafter rushed to the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital where he is still being treated. We also reported the incident at Ado Central Divisional Police Station from where policemen promptly came to arrest his wife.”
Olusegun could not speak when our correspondent visited him in the hospital yesterday. Almost all his entire body was bandaged. An employee of the hospital said the primary target of Abimbola’s assailant may have been his peen as the organ was badly burnt.
The victim’s mother, Madam Folake Olusegun, told Sunday Telegraph that all her son could say before passing out at the hospital was that his wife was angry that he did not take her out on Valentine’s Day. She said that this caused a serious misunderstanding which made his wife threaten to set him ablaze.
“My son said he dared his wife, saying she could not do that. Suddenly, she poured petrol on him and also threw the fire on him,” she said. The woman said further that his son’s wife had been accusing him of cheating on her and that she had been reporting this to his family for sometime. Meanwhile, a relative of Bukola’s, who spoke anonymously, said she could not have set her husband ablaze. Defending the suspect, she said: “I know her very well.
She may have been upset for not being treated well by her husband on that day, but she couldn’t have gone to the level of setting the husband ablaze.
May be it was just some kind of an accident in the house. Bukola isn’t really capable of committing such terrible act.” The spokesman for the state police command, Mr. Albert Adeyemi, who confirmed the incident, said Bukola had confessed to committing the crime.
He said she confessed further that she set him ablaze because she was angry that her husband did not celebrate the Valentine’s Day with her. “According to the Divisional Crime Officer (DCO), Ado Central Divisional Police Station, the woman set her husband ablaze because he didn’t not celebrate Valentine’s Day with her or take her out for fun during the celebration,” the PPRO said.
He gave the assurance that the suspect would be charged to court upon the completion of investigation into the matter but refused to allow her speak to journalist.