Aftermath of Maersk MD’s Wife’s Death: Ikoyi Residents Beef Up Security

Aftermath of Maersk MD’s Wife’s Death: Ikoyi Residents Beef Up Security

Homo sum, humani nihili a me alienum puto. In English, that is loosely translated as ‘I am a human being, nothing human is/can be alien to me’. The Greek maxim penned by Terence implies that one human being should not judge another human being as different from himself, that the same humanity within one man is the same humanity within another. Therefore, whether in good or evil, victories or losses, birth or death, humanity must be recognized as a shared burden.

Although sounding true, the wisdom in those words breaks down in the face of emotion. For example, rarely anyone would have declared their shared humanity with the assailants who rent apart the family of Gildas Tohouo, the managing director of a major shipping company, Maersk.

The family, before the incident, comprised of the Cameroonian Tohouo, his Hungarian wife, Bernadett Kurucz, and their three kids. After the incident, all that survived included a critically-injured Mr. Tohouo and his three kids, the wife having already surrendered to the cold hands of death.

The incident itself is a thing of wonder. The story is that the family were attacked by two suspects, Olamide Goke and Ade Akanbi, who were afterward found with the knife reportedly used to attack the couple. According to knowledgeable sources, the motive behind the attack was theft: the suspects simply wanted to rob and decided to stab both husband and wife multiple times until the wife succumbed to her injuries and died.

At the moment, Mr. Tohouo is still in the hospital – according to the management at Maersk – in a critical but somewhat stable state. Nothing is said about the state of his mind, as one cannot imagine the grief and sorrow he must be experiencing.
The incident has shaken the Ikoyi neighbourhood to its core – the residence of the MD and where the operation took place.

Residents have awoken to the threat of insecurity, and have resorted to sleeping with an eye closed and the other open in apprehension. This is justified because Ikoyi is famed for its high-end occupants and it took two local felons to unravel all that security.

Needless to say, security has been beefed up, but that – doubtless – does nothing to assure residents to close that opened, apprehensive eye.

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