The Mohbad mystery: Justice, scandal and questions unanswered

Three weeks ago, if you had stopped me and asked me about Mohbad, it would have meant nothing to me because I wouldn’t know what or who that was. I suspect that might have been true for many Nigerians. But from September 12, when Ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba, 27, breathed his last, allegedly, his stage name, […]

Three weeks ago, if you had stopped me and asked me about Mohbad, it would have meant nothing to me because I wouldn’t know what or who that was. I suspect that might have been true for many Nigerians. But from September 12, when Ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba, 27, breathed his last, allegedly, his stage name, Mohbad, has become a rallying call for both a fervent demand for justice and a salacious appetite for gossip and scandal. 

The kind of media content, news articles, videos and gossip pieces that have been churned out about the late artiste has been frankly overwhelming. There have been protests demanding justice for him at Lekki, where, again, the police teargased protesters. Every random YouTuber, blogger and wannabe gossip columnist is coming up with ‘scoops’ that are getting wilder by the day—he was poisoned, he was murdered, his wife was unfaithful, his son was not his, he was a saint, he was a crook. Nothing has not been said, and it would seem no one has been or would be spared from this incredible Mohbadmania, from private citizens, famous artists like Naira Marley and Mohbad’s parents included, to institutions like our health care system and the police. Yet again, we find ourselves being swept away by a headless, slow-moving body of lava that doesn’t seem to have decided in which direction it would move.

That is mainly because no one knows precisely what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. Simple details like the exact nature, time and place of his death, not to talk of the actual specifics of it, have remained murky. Why was he getting into fisticuffs with his fellow artistes, what was the nature of his gripe with his former boss, Naira Marley, and what exactly was he being treated for and by whom? For weeks, where he was even pronounced dead was a mystery.

As controversial an artiste as Mohbad might have been in his life, I suppose his greatest art, the greatest piece he has managed to produce in his short life, is the art of his death. It has presented such a phantasmagoric conundrum that will baffle many for a long time.

Kano govt to spend N600m on Dawanau Int’l Grains Market

DSS creates new directorate, appoints Afunaya as pioneer director

In his death, he breathed life into the words of the essayist Esmé Weijun Wang, who, in the book, The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, said, “When an artist dies, the art that never was is often mourned with as much grief as—if not more grief than—the individual themselves. The individual, after all, was flesh and blood. It’s the art that’s immortal.”

In this act, Mohbad mimics the late American rapper Tupac, whose death at 26 in 1996 has immortalised his art and himself. His words and lyrics today are still being fetched and scrutinised with social and philosophical lenses and are branded inspired. He, too, like Mohbad, died in controversial circumstances, and 27 years later, his murder has not been conclusively resolved.

Artistes dying young have always triggered waves of mass mourning and introspection, rumours and suspicion. Talk about Marylin Monroe, for instance, whose death from a drug overdose was tacked to the lapel of one of America’s most famous Presidents, John F. Kennedy, or Michael Jackson, whose doctor was found culpable in his 2009 death. Mohbad’s even echoes the death of late afrobeat star, Dagrin, who died two weeks after a car crash and became more popular and revered in death than he ever was in life.

I do not presume to provide answers to the questions surrounding Mohbad’s death because I have no complete comprehension of the scope of these questions—they are far too many and too overwhelming, to be honest—but I will speculate on what it should mean.

Considering an autopsy has been concluded, and toxicology results are being awaited, I suppose it won’t be long before we know exactly what killed him and if there is a valid reason to suspect murder or manslaughter. There is no point pre-empting that finding. What we can engage in at this point is to ask questions of our public service institutions. The first is the police. 

In his long-lasting feud with his fellow artiste, Naira Marley, Mohbad had apparently filed a petition to the police accusing a certain Samlarry Elegushi and others of attacking him at a video shoot, armed with weapons, inflicting injuries on him and damaging property worth millions. This was in June 2023. Three months later, the artiste turns up dead. Did the police act on his complaints about threats to his life? Did they investigate his claims? When the police was queried on this on Twitter, the police spokesperson, Benjamin Hundeyin seemed more interested in pointing out that the complaint was filed to the wrong office, as if the average Nigerian is supposed to know which office ranks higher than which and which office exactly they are supposed to run to when someone is chasing them with a machete.

It is only common sense that the police have to streamline its communication channels that will ensure cases, complaints and reports are channelled swiftly to the right offices, not to expect frightened or distressed citizens who might never have any business with the police to understand the bureaucracy of police business before seeking their intervention.

Now, following his death, and mostly the social outrage over the circumstances around it, the police have proceeded to exhume his corpse, days after he was buried, to conduct an autopsy. It is a belated intervention but a necessary one. But while that intervention is ongoing, the same police interfered with protesters demanding justice for the late artiste. They proceeded with systemic precision and habitual nonchalance to teargas protestors. 

Why, one has to ask, has the police yet to learn the very essential policing skill of crowd control? After the #EndSARS brouhaha and promises of reform, the show of retraining police officers just a few years down the line, this institution is demonstrating yet again that it still has no respect for citizens’ right to peaceful protests as a fundamental pillar in a democracy. Neither does it seem to grasp that the function of the police in such events is to ensure public safety, not assault protesters with teargas and batons and, in some instances, bullets.

At the heart of the controversy over the singer’s death is also the healthcare system. All sorts of theories have been floated about by people, including medical experts, who did not have the chance to examine the musician’s corpse. He was apparently injected at home by an auxiliary nurse, who, according to the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) Lagos State Council, was not qualified to practice. What he was injected with and why has remained a subject of conjectures drawn out of the whiffs of rumours by professionals who should know better. But here, the onus of the medical associations to ensure that only licensed practitioners actually practice is also dependent on people in need of medical services seeking only professional healthcare providers.  

It took a while for the hospital where he was pronounced dead to come out with a statement. What is now on record is that he was definitively pronounced dead at a hospital before his hasty burial. The circumstances of that hasty burial remain to be examined, but at the very least, until the autopsy proves otherwise, he was certified dead at a hospital before then.

While I understand the urgency for people to get involved in the trending controversy and for some to hope to ride the tide to social media fame, it is pertinent to mention that the life of someone had been lost here, and the lives of his family, including a very young child, is being trampled with malicious and insensitive rumours. Whatever happened, that child remains innocent and will one day grow up to read all this. 

The only way to heal the pains of the family and state the rage of the justice mob is for the investigations to be speedy, efficient and transparent. After all, rumours thrive in the absence of valid information.