Published 26th Jan, 2022

By Emmanuel Uti

Rofeeha Agboluaje, a Nigerian, has accused authorities at the Lviv Polytechnic National University in Lviv, Ukraine, of concealing the mysterious circumstances of the death of Fadlullah Agboluaje, her brother.

In a petition titled ‘Tell us the truth of the death of my 19-year-old son in Ukraine. A helpless mother’s cry’, and signed by Agboluaje on Change.org, she said her brother was in good health when he left Nigeria for college on January 8 and arrived on January 9, 2022.

She said a representative from the school picked Fadlullah up from the airport on arrival and took him to the school accommodation facility where they allocated a room to him on January 9.

“On getting to his designated room, he wasn’t happy with the way it looked and also complained that the heater wasn’t effective, so my mum told him to request a change of room,” Agboluaje said in the petition.

“He went to the front desk of the accommodation facility to report to the personnel on duty, but unfortunately, the person didn’t understand English, so he ended up reaching out to the liaison officer, the undersigned agent on the letter the school sent before he left for Ukraine.”

According to Rofeeha the liaison officer asked Fadlullah to see him the following morning. Meanwhile, her mother kept chatting with Fadlullah till 11 pm to find out how he fared. This was the last time the family heard from Fadlullah.

The deceased student and his mother — Fadlullah and mother

Agboluaje said the following morning, neither she nor her mother heard from Fadlullah. His line did not connect when they dialled his number, and he did not respond to messages. She said their mother became worried at this point.

While panicking, she explained, her mother reached out to the liaison officer whose number was on Fadlullah’s admission letter, but he ignored her calls for some time.

“He (liaison officer) ended up picking up his calls later that evening and then gave a student in that accommodation facility the phone to break the news that my brother was found dead on the floor of his room,” she said.

“It was a big shock. My brother left Nigeria very healthy. He ran a COVID-19 test on the 7th of January and tested negative. He got the full COVID-19 vaccination, took his yellow fever vaccine, and ran a complete health check at our family hospital and everything came out fine.”

The late Fadullah's room in Ukraine — Fadlullah’s room

Following the news of Fadlullah’s death, Agboluaje and her mother asked the officer to send a picture of the state he was in for them to confirm if he was truly dead, but he did not send any picture until the evening of the following day, January 11.

“I couldn’t look at the picture until Wednesday, January 12, 2022, because I just couldn’t look at my younger brother’s death. As an older one, you always want to fend for your younger siblings. It hurt too much to look at the picture, but my mind needed to have a grasp of the evidence.”

“I looked at the picture on my uncle’s phone and my brother looked asleep in the blue shirt he wore from Nigeria, as seen in the picture, fully buttoned up and in a thick blue-furred coat.”

“They haven’t sent us another picture of my brother in his dead state. They said they’ve run an autopsy. Where’s the official report? Why is the school not reaching out to us like they’re truly concerned? Or like they’re taking responsibility. What even happened to my brother?”

FIJ placed several calls to Lviv Polytechnic National University, but they did not answer. At press time, they had not responded to a text message sent to one of their lines.

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