Why the Dowen College 5 deserve an apology

Where are those public figures and celebrities who lead the mob in demanding for the heads of those children? Daddy Freeze, Kemi Olunloyo, Tonto Dikeh and the others, will they be decent enough to own up to their wrong publicly?

Isn’t it noble to sensitize their fans at this time about the wrong they did by almost sacrificing innocent teenagers to atone for the life of another teenager or is one life more important than others? Or do we need to wait till one of these 5 boys become suicidal?

For the sake of context here are a few developments on the issue:

An autopsy was conducted in the presence of 9 pathologists representing the different parties involved and the autopsy revealed that Sylvester died of sepsis from complications arising from an injury around his ankle which wasn’t properly treated.

Dr. Aghogho Owhojedo, the Oromoni family's doctor who treated the late Sylvester Oromoni Jnr. From Nov 26th when he arrived Warri till 30th, when he died, testified that he did not see any evidence of physical assault on the deceased and he told the Coroner that Sylvester did not die of blunt force trauma

The family friend who picked Sylvester up from school confirmed that he had no signs of bodily injury or physical trauma at the time he picked him up.

Sylvester had an enlarged liver which may have been due to pre-existing conditions or non specific hepatitis as stated by the pathologist in Warri.

In other words, the claim that Sylvester died as a result of bullying by the 5 accused students of Dowen college has been dismissed. THE PAINFUL FACT HOWEVER IS THAT LITTLE SYLVESTER DIED, ALBEIT FROM NATURAL CAUSES which could probably have been avoided if his health management was handled better. I am not God and I cannot say for sure.

The counsel to the deceased requested that the magistrate indefinitely adjourns the inquest/investigations, while I can understand that they may have gotten to a point where they would like to mourn in private, what lead to that sudden realization? Is it okay to arouse so much public sympathy and destabilize the lives of these 5 little boys for months then suddenly ask for investigations to be postponed indefinitely?

Could they rather agree that in the cause of their grief they may have gone too far in casting aspersion and now that they have realized this they would like to withdraw the case and clean the names of the wrongfully accused children?

Now that this has been established the sensible thing that is expected of the society is to do the right thing by apologizing openly to the 5 boys for not only wrongly accusing and exposing them to the public court of justice, but also for arresting and remanding them in custody for 2 weeks.

Has anyone out there thought about the effect that this could have had on these children??? Those children have been scarred and I cannot imagine what they are going through at this time. The same energy that was used to demand justice for Sylvester should be used to demand #JusticeforDowen5. This society has failed them, they do not deserve to be caught up in whatever politics is going on in court.

-Victoria Nkong, Child Right Activist writes from Lagos.

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