Crimes

Poly student commits suicide after losing school fees to betting

A student of the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, Ogun State, Samuel Adekoya, has committed suicide after losing his fees and that of his friend to online betting.

It was gathered that the student, who lost the school fees to online betting last Friday, killed himself by drinking some chemical substance on Monday, May 22.

It was learned that Adekoya, who was a National Diploma II student of Electrical Electronic Engineering, swindled his friend who shared a room with him by getting his password and used his fee to play and also lost.

He was said to have committed suicide when the students were about to commence their first semester examination.

It was gathered that the polytechnic had warned that no student would be allowed to take an examination without completing their registration.

Confirming the incident, the Deputy Registrar, Public Relations of the polytechnic, Sola Abiala, said the institution clinic referred the student to a specialist hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after he was admitted to the hospital.

Abiala said it was confirmed at the specialist hospital that Adekoya took a chemical substance.

He said: “It was detected at the specialist hospital that the late student drank snipper.

“His father told the school that his son had used his school fees to gamble last session but he had to rescue him by making another payment.

“We have a policy here that any student that does not pay school fees will not write exam.

“He realised that he and his friend would not write the exam, that was why he committed suicide.

“We sent for his parents and briefed them. His father told us that his late son did the same thing last session and he had to send money to him to pay the fees.

“He said if he had known about the latest one, he would have paid for it.

“But when we asked the father to take possession of the corpse, he rejected it and said he could not take his son’s corpse back home.

“He asked us to bury him. The school paid part of the burial expenses, and had to pay the fee for the other student whose fee was used to gamble to avoid another calamity. We didn’t want him to also commit suicide.

“We were surprised that he did not leave any suicide note behind. We did not see any note. We went to his house and checked for a note, but there was no note other than the bottle of the snipper he drank,” Abiala disclosed.

The Star