A senator’s lonely death

In September 2022, the Nigerian Tribune reported the discovery of the skeleton of an engineer, Mr John Aderemi Abiola, in his house in the Adeosun/Idi Orogbo community of Ibadan. He had been out of sight for almost four years. Some of his neighbours thought he was away in Port Harcourt where he worked; others thought he was abroad where he reportedly had children. It was when snakes from his overgrown compound began invading the house next door that the community finally gained entry. They found his skeleton on the bed. He died four years earlier with no one knowing.

Now comes the account of a senator who was a somebody but died like a nobody. At the Senate’s plenary on Tuesday last week, Senator Abdul Ningi narrated how his former colleague, Bello Mandiya, reportedly slipped in his bathroom in Abuja, struck his head and died.

According to Ningi, Mandiya was last seen on Friday, September 4, preparing for congregational prayers. His body was discovered about 72 hours later. The Chief Imam of Apo had become concerned about his absence from prayers; people got to his door, a foul smell eventually prompted entry into the residence.

Mandiya had represented Katsina South in the Senate and had served as chief of staff to a governor. Those are positions around which people ordinarily gather or loiter. Yet, for three days, the silence of the man who had occupied those posts was not loud enough to search him out. He died lonely. Where were his family, friends, aides? “There is nothing permanent about anything. Nothing permanent about our position, nothing permanent about our wealth,” Ningi told his colleagues.

The remains of the Ibadan engineer lay undiscovered for four years; the senator’s body for three days. Their circumstances were different, but they both force a question upon the living: who would notice if we disappeared from our own regular lives? We build high fences, acquire gated houses and celebrate the freedom to be left alone. We move from neighbourhoods where someone asks whether we have eaten, to estates where nobody knows whether we are breathing.

Shakespeare in Henry V covets the privacy “that private men enjoy.” Normal human beings value the peace of privacy but it becomes frightening when it kills and conceals our bodies for days, even for years; the neighbourhood is curious only when invasive snakes or stench slither in. The Ibadan engineer reportedly paid his community dues faithfully but “didn’t associate with his neighbours.” The man belonged to the community’s accounts but did not belong to the community. In a bustling area of Ibadan, in life and in death, he was alone and lonely. The late legislator lived and fell unnoticed, unhelped in a Legislators’s Quarters.

As I discussed the senator’s death with a friend on Friday night, she told two intimate stories that further wrenched the heart. She said: “A young woman in my church lost her 68-year-old dad who was a widower. He lived alone in Enugu because all his children lived far away. His daughter had tried to reach him on the phone without success and had called people to go and check on him. His corpse was discovered in the house and, by estimation, he must have died two days earlier.

“A colleague, sometime in August 2025, received a call from relatives that his mum who lived alone in Port Harcourt had not been sighted for three days and could not be reached by phone. The house gate was locked from inside. He made contacts and gave permission to neighbours to break the gate open and check the house. His mother’s body was found decaying at the bathroom door. She must have passed away three days before the body was discovered.”

I was with Professor Toyin Falola on October 11 in Ibadan when he delivered a lecture, titled ‘The Paradox of Connection: Why the Most Networked Age in History Is Also the Loneliest’. The lecture, hosted by the Ibadan Social Group on its 50 years anniversary, offers a useful distinction: “Physical closeness is not intimacy.” Even virtual presence can mean emotional absence. A man can hold three phones with hundreds of contacts in them, yet he receives not a single call from any of them. The professor spoke of the “professional class of the 21st century, folks who know hundreds and hundreds of people and are intimately acquainted with nearly none of them.” People who “have been…everywhere and belong nowhere.” That is the paradox of this age. Houses can stand shoulder to shoulder while their occupants live worlds apart.

ALSO READ: 2027: Consensus candidate could emerge a few days to election — G100 convener

A line above speaks of phones that hold hundreds of contacts but secure no dependable relationship. Senator Ningi said his late colleague’s phones were on his bed; the Ibadan man’s phones and laptop were also found beside his skeleton. He, in fact, had three phones, “one was found by his left hand, one was at the back of his head and connected to the wall socket and the third one by his right side.” For four years, not even a thief came for them. His Volkswagen Golf, registration number AKD 769 DC, also stood undisturbed, swallowed by the bush that had inherited his compound. He was that lonely.

Falola’s argument for social clubs reaches beyond dinners, titles and anniversary ceremonies to the obligations that make membership meaningful: Every member should be expected, their habits recognised; their absence noticed. In Senator Mandiya’s case, the reported concern about his missed prayers shows the value of such regular fellowship. Someone knows your usual seat. When it is suddenly empty, that particular someone should ask why.

A friend said that we should all ask questions while an answer is still possible. Call the friend who has gone quiet. Check daily on the colleague who lives alone. Another friend said neighbourhoods should learn to recognise prolonged absence as a reason for concern. Yes, none of these guarantees that every emergency will end in rescue. But, at least, it gives help a chance to arrive.

The senator’s lone death should trouble a society so lavish with attendance at funerals. We know how to fill a compound when its owner dies, we must also learn to knock while the sick, lonely landlord can still open the door.