Adibe Emenyonu in Benin City
Four days after the news of the suicide of the woman identified in the ‘Mummy Calm Down’ video, which went viral in 2020, Mrs. Toluige Olokoobi Babalola, broke in Benin City, the Edo Police Command yesterday confirmed that the husband of the deceased had been arrested for interrogation.
Mrs. Babalola, whose video of her encounter with her then four-year old son, Oreofeoluwa Lawal-Babablola, went viral, when the little boy went theatrical while asking his mother to “calm down” before administering corporal punishment on him for the infraction of taking what he was not permitted to take, was said to have committed suicide in her Benin residence on Monday.
Speaking on the development, Edo State Police Command Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Chidi Nwabuzor, who confirmed the incident, added that Mrs. Babalola’s husband, who reported the matter to the police, had been taken into custody.
According to Nwabuzor, the now-arrested husband of the deceased was said to have reported at the Evbuotubu Police Station, off Ekehuan Road, Benin City, that when he returned from the market, he met his wife hung on a rope round her neck.
Mr. Babbalola was said to have raised alarm, which attracted his neighbours, who accompanied him to take the woman to the hospital where she was confirmed dead, before her corpse was taken to the mortuary.
The Police Spokesman added that the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), in charge of Evbuotubu Police Station, queried the action of the deceased’s husband for not reporting to the police when he found his wife in the suicide position, but chose self-help by taking the deceased to the hospital and mortuary without recourse to the police, which has the constitutional responsibility to investigate matters
“The man is still with the police and would soon be transferred to the Command homicide section of the state CID for further investigation”, Nwabuzor declared.
When Journalists visited the deceased home at No 89, Garrick Layout, Off Ekehuan Road, Benin City, it was found to be under lock, just as her neighbours were unwilling to volunteer any information.
However, a neighbour who, agreed to speak under strict condition of anonymity, expressed surprise at the news of the suicide by the late Mrs. Babalola.
Describing the deceased as a distributor of pharmaceutical products, while her husband was a member of staff of one of the new generation banks before turning to an automobile dealer, the neighbour noted that the couple were living happily together, and there were no signs to indicate that the woman was passing through any difficulty.
“I am surprised because the deceased was said to have committed suicide in the presence of her one-year-old baby,” the neighbour volunteered.
Mrs. Babalola, a mother of three, was alleged to have committed suicide by hanging herself with rope in their apartment while the husband had gone to the market.
It would be recalled that the Babalola family became popular, when the video of him begging his mother to “calm down” and not punish him for the accusation by the mother that she had repeatedly warned the lad never to take whatever he was not permitted to take.
The sensational Oreofeoluwa dramatically went on his knees, begging to be given his “last chance on earth” so that he could escape the impending corporal punishment, or in the alternative, the mother should not make the punishment ‘hot”, urging the mother to “be calming down”.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, who apparently was moved by the lad’s mien, invited the family to the Government House, and also adopted “calm down” as the year 2020 Eid-el-Kabir pay off to appeal to the people of the state not to panic as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the entire world then.
