Cynthia Osokogu: Social media and a family’s agony

Cynthia Osokogu

FOR days, weeks, the Osokogu family had hoped for the best.

Cynthia, their much-loved daughter, would reappear and a plausible explanation would be given as to where she had been since July 22, 2012.

An only daughter, doted upon by the whole family, Cynthia was a ‘sensible girl’,  ‘with a good head on her shoulders’,  ‘intelligent’, ‘smart’ and also ‘trusting’.

It may be that last attribute, her trusting nature, that raised the furious wind that blew out the brightly-burning candle that her life was.

When her father, Frank Osokogu, a retired Major General in the Nigerian Army, heard that her body had been found in a Lagos mortuary, the man who had had his share of battles and all that went with it, simply collapsed.

His daughter had fallen prey to a new breed of predators who stalk their preys, patiently, deceptively, hiding their true colours and real intentions under a camouflage of lies.

Confidence tricksters of the first order, they have found in the Internet and the social media like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others, efficient tools through which they attract, like moths to flames, their victims who had been deceived by their avowals of need for true friendship.

In Europe and America, they are quite notorious and law enforcement agencies, as well as some social media, warn people, especially young girls and women to be extra careful before meeting in person the friends they make online.

The warning is that unless such care was taken, the gullible, easily-taken-in could be walking into a web spun by a venomous spider from which there may be no escape.

It was into such a web spun by people she met online that Cynthia Udoka Osokogu walked into when she arrived in Lagos from Abuja on Sunday, July 22, 2012.

Tracking down Cynthia’s killers was quite a feat for the Nigerian Police.

A demonstration of how adept some of the officers now are at using technology to investigate or even interrogating technology itself.

Based on a phone call, the police had taken the body away from the hotel to the mortuary in Isolo, Lagos, and in collaboration with the Nigerian Immigration Service established that she was not a call-girl as was intended for them to believe.

The trail was already getting cold until, as someone said, ‘Cynthia’s restless spirit’ pointed an unerring finger to the direction that police investigators later concentrated upon.

‘A call to her telephone was answered by someone who turned out to be in FESTAC area of Lagos, following which investigators went to the hotel.

Thanks to shots from the Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) monitor at the hotel, photographs of persons who went to her room were obtained and subsequently, arrests were made.

Two of the suspects in Cynthia’s death were brought before newsmen at the Lagos Police Command headquarters, yesterday.

Unfortunately, Cynthia herself would not ever be able to tell the story of how she first met the duo of Okumo Nwabufo, 33 and Ezeke Oliselokan, 22, who yesterday confessed to luring her to a Lagos hotel and killing her.

Shocking as it is, it is also significant that her killers admitted the late Cynthia was their fourth victim, but the only one they killed.

So, what was their motive? Money? Rituals? Whatever. The Osokogu family has lost a shining star, a beauty, to ugliness at its ugliest.