By Adesina Soyooye
Adeleja Aremu, immediate younger brother to the murdered Monarch of Koro in Ekiti, Kwara State, Oba Olusegun Aremu-Cole, Olukoro of Koro, has revealed that His Royal Highness was killed because he refused to obey the orders of his assailants to stand up and follow them.
His Royal Highness, 66, was a retired Senior Military Officer and, apparently, not used to taking orders from bloody civilians, especially, strangers.
A devastated Adeleja who narrated how his elder brother, the Oba, was killed, said the Oba’s aide who was present, but escaped as soon as the assailants fired gunshots, narrated to him the circumstances under which the Oba was killed.
According to Adeleja, when the hoodlums met the Oba, they ordered him to stand up and follow them. Perhaps, their initial plan was to abduct him. But the Oba refused to obey their order to “stand up and follow them.” They followed their order by firing some shots to scare him. But, given his Military background, the gunshots did not scare him. That infuriated them. They knew they were dealing with a stubborn man, so, they killed him in cold blood. They also abducted the Monarch’s wife and two of their neighbors after shooting him to death.
Adeleja who lives close to the village and spoke to The Punch said: “They came into the Palace and met him and asked him to stand up. They wanted to abduct him. He refused to get up, saying that nobody could command him like that. He refused to take orders from unknown people. So, they shot in the air to scare him. But they saw he wasn’t afraid.
“Of course, they know they met a stubborn person. And that was how they shot him. This was what the houseboy told us. He bolted out through the back door when my brother was shot, but he saw all that transpired.”
Born in 1958, Aremu-Cole was installed the Traditional Ruler of his Community in 2017 after his retirement from the Military. He is the third Traditional Ruler to be killed by assailants within one week. Two of them had earlier been killed in Ekiti State on their way home from attending a Security meeting.
