Abubakar Yakubu
5 January 2009
Detectives at the Mararaba Police Station are trying to find out why a 30-year-old housewife Olajimoke Ilesonmi allegedly set her husband and their four-month-old son ablaze in their apartment at Mararaba, Nasarawa State, on Christmas eve.
Both victims died same day as a result of severe burns they sustained.
According to police sources, the woman claimed that her husband and child got burnt when the kerosene stove in her kitchen exploded after she lit it.
But detectives and neighbours wonder how the fire got to the husband who was lying on a sofa in their sitting room and the child who was in bed inside the bedroom, when the woman herself did not sustain any injury from the alleged explosion.
The case, police sources said, "is even more puzzling as the woman said she lit the stove herself, while the stove which she claimed exploded appears new and her kitchen wears no sign of explosion."
"What was only burnt was the sofa, the man was lying on and the bed where the baby slept," a neighbour said.
Neighbours said they were woken up by screams at around 4.30am on December 23, 2008 and at first thought robbers were operating until some of them gathered courage and traced where the screams were coming from.
"What we saw really beat our imagination as our neighbour, Toyin Ilesonmi and his son, Solomon, were burnt," a witness said.
He said they immediately sent for the police, who carried both burnt persons to the hospital.
"The baby died at 7am that morning while the man died at 7.30pm on the same day," he added.
A man at the scene told our reporter that a day before the incident, the woman left the house with a two-litre can to buy petrol.
Our reporter gathered that the couple got married in June last year in Lagos.
An officer at the Mararaba Police Station told Daily Trust that investigation was going on in the case.
"The suspect is undergoing psychiatric examination at a hospital and as soon as that is finished, she will be charged to court," the officer said.
When our reporter visited the National Hospital, Abuja, Olajimoke was seen sleeping while a police officer watched over her.
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