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Something mysterious happened in the year 2017, in my lodge precisely. This to everyone remained a mystery till the culprit was figured out.
THE SANITATION SAGA
In the year 2017 I happened to be a member of the popular Emmanuel lodge in school. We had a lodge president who was in charge of the lodge welfare and we also had a dues/tax collector in charge of collecting Nepa bills, sanitation bills etc. The name of our lodge president was Thelma while the name of our dues/tax collector was Nelson. The lodge was very organized especially when it comes to cleanliness, my lodge would rank amongst the first in the whole school environment. We normally paid the sum of one thousand Naira monthly per room for general sanitation carried out by the employed lodge cleaner.
As usual few people would comply to paying their sanitation dues on time while other’s had to stress Nelson before they could even pay their sanitation dues. This is because human beings are one difficult nut to crack especially when it comes to money matters. I also tried to comply when the time was due for payment as I never liked to stress Nelson but there was this strange guy in our lodge called Sammy, his character was questionable as he was never seen as a student. He always had issues with a lot of people, and he looked more like a school dropout. Unfortunately he was amongst the tenants that normally gave Nelson a hard time in our lodge. One faithful evening we started to hear some people shouting and exchanging words to each other on the first floor of the lodge.
The whole lodge members had to rush to the first series to see what was happening, only to find Sammy and Nelson in a heated up argument. It looked scary, as Nelson told Sammy that he doesn’t pay his sanitation dues, also Nelson called him a dirty pig for always leaving remains of his cigarette in front of the passage corridor. On the other hand Sammy wanted to start a fight with Nelson, as Sammy ran inside his room only to break a bottle halfway and come back for Nelson. Everyone had to rush inside Sammy’s room to hold him as we urged Nelson to leave the heated scenario. As we calmed Sammy down, I could remember him saying that he was a man of few words but his actions would speak for him. He told us to go ask about him in university of Calabar as a result of his wicked actions back in school he got rusticated. That thing he said sank into my head as I knew he was a school drop out really. We all had to leave him for other activities we had at hand.
The next morning, we heard a loud knock on the same first floor, it happened to be that Nelson already mobilized the youth sanitation boys in the hood to come pay Sammy a visit. They shouted at Sammy and forced him to pay his own part of the sanitation dues with extra fining of five hundred Naira. Sammy was left with no option than to pay the sum of one thousand five hundred Naira to the youths for his late sanitation payment. This led to another heated argument between Sammy and Nelson. Finally for the month the sanitation saga was over and we all thought that was just the end of the case.
After about 3 days, I noticed something strange. I stopped seeing Nelson, neither did he reply our questions on the general Emmanuel lodge group chat. We called the attention of our lodge president Thelma and she became inquisitive, we asked her when last she saw Nelson and she said about two day’s ago. We complained that we tried calling him because of our receipts but nobody answered, then we all walked to his room door to knock. As we knocked nobody answered us, then Thelma tried his line right in front of us, only for us to hear the sound of his phone ringing from his room. This looked weird as we knocked again, but nobody opened the door. Well, we just thought he was sleeping inside his lodge and we decided to leave thinking that maybe later in the day he would come out to issue our receipts to us.
That same evening nobody showed up, then the next day people at the same series with Nelson started to perceive a terrible and offensive odour. Then we called on Thelma, because it was so displeasing. Only for us to trace this fowl odour to Nelson’s door. This is when we decided to break into the door, only to find the already decomposed remains of Nelson in the room. Also we found out that his room was locked from outside and the key to his room was no where to be found and also a pillow was directly on the head of Nelson. Thelma screamed while I took to my heels, it was a terrible scenario to behold. We quickly called the School security, then the school clinic was immediately alerted. An ambulance was released by the clinic to come take the remains of Nelson while the school security had to carry all lodge members to their chambers for questioning.
Nelson’s parents were alerted and immediately the police got involved. They had to carry everyone to the station, after proper questioning. The police asked our lodge president if Nelson had a fight with anybody and she told the police about the little misunderstanding Nelson had with Sammy. Sammy was also questioned, and he told the police that the issue was long settled. Then they had to release us but they told us not to leave town or school for any reason. I was so scared, likewise every other lodge members. Then our landlord also went for questioning and he narrated to the police that Nelson was of good behavior as a tenant in his house, and that he had no idea of what happened to him. After about one week, our lodge president was called and told that Nelson died of suffocation, based on the autopsy that was carried out. Everyone was told about this, and an immediate meeting was carried out in the lodge.
Thelma asked if anybody had an idea of what happened to Nelson and everyone said they had no idea about what happened to him. We were also told to remain in town, and not leave the school premises. Suddenly we noticed that Sammy wasn’t sleeping in the lodge again and he would always brush in and out of the lodge. Along the line we totally stopped seeing Sammy and this increased our suspicions, that he could have a hand in the death of Nelson. The police came again but this time they wanted to talk to Sammy based on the fact that he was the only one that had a major issue with Nelson in the lodge. We called Sammy’s line but he didn’t pick, also we checked his friends lodges but he wasn’t there either. Immediately the police declared Sammy wanted, all his friends were arrested.
The police had to make life miserable for his friends, until one of his friend named Nnamdi spoke out saying that Sammy went back to university of calabar to start staying with his sister there. Sammy was only communicating with Nnamdi which he was the only one to know his whereabout. The police use his friend Nnamdi as a bait to catch Sammy, which worked out as planned. Finally Sammy was tortured by the police, which made him confess guilty to the murder of Nelson his neighbor and lodge mate. He told the police that Nelson left his door open on a faithful afternoon while playing music, on the other hand he wanted to borrow a plate from Nelson only to find him already sleeping on the bed. Then he used the pillow to suffocate him in his sleep, and that was how it happened. To cut the story short Nelson was transfered from Enugu prison to zone 9 in umuahia and that was the last we heard about him till date.