Alanis reportedly jumped in front of a moving train on May 29, 2023, at a station in Manchester, United Kingdom.
Oladapo Ogundipe, the father of Alanis Ogundipe, a British-born Nigerian woman who reportedly committed suicide due to repeated physical abuse and blackmail allegedly by her boyfriend, has explained the “cause” of his 26-year-old daughter’s death.
Alanis reportedly jumped in front of a moving train on May 29, 2023, at a station in Manchester, United Kingdom.
Ogundipe explained that his daughter's troubles began when her boyfriend, Ryan Leggetts, whom she met in 2022, infected her with herpes. She saw this as a stigma and decided to keep it a secret.
Speaking during an interview with The Punch, the Nigerian businessman said there has been more revelation and clarity regarding the death of his daughter.
He said the impression he got from Alanis's mother was that they should have a single lawyer to represent both him and his ex-wife. He alleged that his former wife told him not to communicate with the legal team, which he found strange but agreed to.
"I trusted her. It was the first day of the hearing, and the way the barrister representing us acted when I tried to speak with him was off-putting. When I asked if they could give him the phone, I was trying to raise a point, but he didn't want to speak to me. I found it strange.
“How can you not even speak to me before the hearing to hear my perspective? He just discounted everything.”
He said when the hearing began, Alanis's boyfriend, Ryan Leggett, was present remotely. He told the judge that the lawyer was not representing him as an interested party and that he had the right to ask questions and give his own evidence.
He said he told the judge that he wanted to present his own evidence and ask questions.
"The judge said he had to adjourn it so that they could get submissions from the other interested parties; at this point, Ryan was also implicated,” he said.
He explained that when the hearing resumed, Ryan did not also show up. The judge asked the police if they had any objections, but the police did not object.
He claimed Alanis's mother was the one giving instructions to the lawyer on how to proceed. According to him, to his surprise, the lawyer opposed Alanis's father, who presented evidence to the court.
Ogundipe said, "The judge overruled that and called me to give out the evidence. I provided the evidence and requested to ask questions as an interested party. They said the coroner should allow me to submit my questions in writing. When it was Alanis's mother's turn, the barrister acted in opposition.”
He said it was at that point that he knew he was vindicated about the suspicions of the mother he had all along.
"Ogundipe said that before Alanis died, her mother failed to report what her late daughter had told her about Ryan, even from the point where he assaulted her.
She failed as a mother to encourage Alanis to end the relationship before he actually broke into her, even after Alanis reported the case to her mother," he said.
He alleged that Alanis's mother failed to report the case to the police. According to him, even after his daughter died, his ex-wife still did not report the case to the police.
"I was the first person to report to the police on the 14th of June 2023. After that, the mother started speaking about it. It made me remember my initial suspicions: why was she hurrying for the body to be cremated before any coroner's investigation could commence? The autopsy they did wasn't forensic,” he said.
He alleged that they had hidden all evidence because the mother gave Alanis a tablet the day before she died and on the day she died.
"The mother did mention in her statement that the impression she conveyed in court and to the police was that Alanis was the one who took the antidepressant tablet herself. Antidepressants are known to induce suicide if overdosed.
"When the police arrived at Alanis's flat where she had died at 9 pm, Ryan had been repeatedly calling her mother's phone. Initially, her mother refused to pick up and answer the call, but once the policeman arrived, she was forced to give him the phone.
He said the mother hid a lot of things from him. He also mentioned he was unaware that his late daughter had been taking antidepressants or had been abused by her boyfriend in any way until after she died.
"The reason the mother gave me was that she doesn't want me to take Alanis away from her. They concluded that Alanis has short-term financial difficulties and that the breakup of a loving relationship led her to do it, which I don't agree with,” he said.
He said she was expecting 100,000 pounds in three days, she had just received her salary day before she died, which was the day broken to her phone.
"She has not sold the car I bought for her, nor has she sold her jewelry. How can it be financial difficulties? he said.
Ogundipe said the big lesson from this is that when anybody you know dies, especially a loved one, and people start asking what killed them, don't give out any information until you get to the bottom of it.
He said the very first information you give to people is what they will hold on to and believe, just as he initially believed what Alanis's mother was telling him.
He added that people have held onto that story and what they believed, so now, for him, digging deeper reveals that it's contrary to what people want to hear anymore due to their bias.