Reported by Ariajegbe Sylvia Esezobor
New details emerging from the suicide of a 30-year-old polytechnic student, Al-Amin Mohammed, suggest that the mishandling of a minor financial dispute by the Oyo State Police Command triggered a chain of events that ended with him ingesting rat poison at his family home in Ibadan on September 17, 2026, three days after he was released from prison custody.
The tragedy began with a transaction at a Point-of-Sale centre owned by Kazeem Mukaila. Al-Amin had collected N23,000 in cash, transferred N15,000, and promised to pay the outstanding N8,000 later, claiming he had exceeded his daily transaction limit. When he delayed payment, Mukaila's apprentice, identified as Iya Ajike, went to Al-Amin's residence while he was sleeping and seized his mobile phone. Al-Amin returned to retrieve the phone, and a scuffle ensued. He was detained overnight by a vigilante, handed over to officers at the Sanyo Divisional Police Station on September 9, and charged to court the following day.
The charge sheet, obtained by Saturday PUNCH, directly contradicts the police's public account. The Oyo State Police Command, through its spokesperson, DSP Ayanlade Olayinka, had issued a statement insisting that Al-Amin was prosecuted for assault and malicious damage to an Airtel SIM registration machine valued at N177,000, and that the charges had nothing to do with the N8,000 debt. However, the charge sheet shows that the second count contained the N8,000 debt. Al-Amin was charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of public peace and damage to an Android Itel phone valued at N177,000, not the Airtel machine referenced in the police statement.
Al-Amin spent four days at the Agodi Custodial Centre after his family could not immediately meet bail conditions of N100,000 with two sureties in like sum. His parents eventually stood as sureties, and he returned home on September 14. But his mother, Simiat Mohammed, said the son who returned was not the same man who had left. He barely ate, withdrew from people, and repeatedly complained about the humiliation of being detained, taken to court and remanded in prison over an allegation he insisted was untrue.
"He kept saying that they wanted to tarnish his image because he came from a poor family and that he was sent to prison for a crime he did not commit," Simiat told Saturday PUNCH. He recorded a voice note expressing frustration and saying what would become his final words to his mother. "He said the frustration was too much and asked his siblings to take care of me. He mentioned my name and apologised, telling me not to be angry with him," she recalled.
A retired Deputy Superintendent of Police, Isiaka Ayole, who took bail for Al-Amin from the Agodi Custodial Centre, said the deceased told him he suffered prison remand because he was poor. "He said, 'Brother, do you know they made me suffer because I don't know anyone?' He sounded depressed," Ayole said. He added that Iya Ajike's seizure of Al-Amin's phone was unlawful and that the police violated his rights by detaining and prosecuting him while failing to interrogate or arrest the woman accused of taking his phone. "Taking the property of someone who was sleeping is unlawful seizure. It is unlawful and punishable by law. The boy kept repeating that to me as we were leaving the prison. He kept saying the police and the complainant punished him unjustly."
The police have denied any causal link between the case and Al-Amin's death, saying it would be inappropriate to draw such a connection without verified facts. "The circumstances surrounding the death should therefore be determined through appropriate investigation and established evidence, rather than through an inaccurate or incomplete narrative," the command said.
The case has raised disturbing questions about the treatment of poor Nigerians within the criminal justice system, where minor financial disputes can escalate into criminal charges, detention and imprisonment when the accused cannot afford legal representation or bail. Al-Amin, an aluminium fixer who also studied at a polytechnic in Kwara State, was not accused of theft, fraud or violent crime. His alleged offence was the non-payment of N8,000, a sum that police bail and legal processes turned into a criminal prosecution that cost him his freedom and, ultimately, his life.
For the Mohammed family, the loss is unbearable. His father, Habeeb Mohammed, said three hospitals rejected Al-Amin before the family reached the University College Hospital, Ibadan. "We were asked to make some payments before he could be attended to. After we paid, the doctor came and told us that he was dead," he said. Simiat, his mother, said the events that led to her son's death should never have gone beyond a minor disagreement. "They ruined my reputation," Al-Amin said in his final voice note. His words now stand as an indictment of a system that treated a poor man's small debt as a crime deserving of punishment rather than mediation, and that left him feeling so humiliated and hopeless that death seemed the only escape.
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