When the husband and his friend, who is also a driver, went to inform Mrs Andry Nwokedi, the owner of the vehicle about the theft, he was detained and tortured mercilessly and his family never heard from him again until his body was found in the lagoon.
Adekunle Tade, a Lagos Uber driver who was declared missing by his wife in December 2018, has been mysteriously found dead in a lagoon at Lekki, Lagos State.
According to the Mrs Adeola Tade, wife of the deceased, the 38-year-old man was a victim of armed robbers who snatched his car from him at gunpoint along Ikeja airport road in December.
The late driver was said to have reported the case at the Police station nearest to the robbery scene. The following day when the husband and his friend, who is also a driver, went to inform Mrs Andry Nwokedi, the owner of the vehicle about the theft, he was detained and tortured mercilessly and his family never heard from him again until his body was found in the lagoon.
Mrs Tade said when she contacted the woman who owns the stolen car to know the whereabouts of her husband, the woman warned her not to ever "call the number again" and that she should “go to blazes”. Mrs Andry also told the wife of the deceased that her husband had jumped into the lagoon while they were taking him to the Police Station.
Meanwhile, Kehinde Olatono, the Uber driver who accompanied the deceased to his vehicle owner's house, claimed he heard some strange noise inside the house while waiting for his friend outside and that he ran to see what was happening but was shocked to see his friend being tortured on a bare floor and had to "run for his dear life”.
A close relation of the deceased, who preferred not to be named, expressed his suspicion on the claim of the vehicle owner, stating that the driver could not have jumped into the lagoon.
He said: "My suspicion is that Adekunle could not have been so daft. He could not have jumped inside the river, although the lady alleged that he ran into the river while they were taking him to the Police. There is no way he could have jumped into the river just because they are taking him to the police station. My suspicion is that he must have been beaten to a coma, possibly he had died while he was with them before they now cooked up the story.
“There is no way somebody that had been physically weakened, according to the report we have, would have jumped out of a moving car. I think it was when they had beaten him and they didn't know what to do that the woman had to go and drop the body into the lagoon."
He, however, added that "the picture of the dead body where the body was claimed to have been recovered did not look like a body that had been in water for three days."
SaharaReporters tried several times to hear the vehicle owner's side of the story so as to find out what transpired between her and Mr Adekunle Tade, but all efforts proved abortive.
When contacted, she said she did not want to talk about anything that has to do with her former driver, Adekunle.