Kogi director suffered partial stroke before committing suicide, police say

 In a curious turnaround of event yesterday, the Kogi State police command vowed to conduct an autopsy on the body of the suicide victim, Edward Soje, a director in Kogi State Civil Service, who hanged himself in Lokoja last Thursday.

 

The late Soje hanged himself on a tree after his wife gave birth to triplets in a hospital in Abuja after 17 years of childlessness. Though they did not deny he committed suicide, the Police Public Relation Officer (PPRO), Mr. Williams Ayah, said the command has concluded plans to conduct autopsy to ascertain what actually led to his death.

He explained that when the military found his body dangling on a tree, there was no suicide note on him, stressing that the man was suffering from partial stroke before he committed suicide.

Ayah noted that investigation has commenced and very soon, they will get to the root of the matter.Meanwhile, another Kogi State civil servant lost his daughter to an illness after being unable to pay her hospital bills. The civil servant, in a video trending on social media, told his story amidst tears, cradling his dead daughter on an hospital bed.

According to him, he hadn’t been paid salary in the past 10 months. When asked why he did not take the girl to the hospital early enough, the grieving father said he had no money.

It would be recalled that the Head of Service of the state, Deaconess Deborah Ogunmola, in a press statement, said late Soje was last paid in December 2016. She said Soje continued to receive his salaries till December, even while the Staff Screening and Verification Exercise was ongoing.

“His pay was stopped after proof emerged that he falsified his age records. Following engagements with labour, which spanned several months, the state governor magnanimously commuted the disciplinary action due against certain categories of offenders by grant of pardon. Soje fell into one of the categories.