A man suspected tio be an Associate Professor of English has
died at a waste dump site in Lagos in abject penury.
The man Dr Olawunmi Thorpe was said to have been neglected by
his siblings and was sited at the dump site yesterday after..Before help could
reach him later in the evening,he was dead.
This was how online paper News Express captured the story..
“It’s finally over for Olawunmi Thorpe, Ph.D, whose
heartbreaking story we broke about this evening. Dr. Thorpe died just as a
Lagos-based NGO touched by his plight was making efforts to evacuate and take
care of him.
“My dear brother, the man is
dead,” journalist and social worker Larry Happiday, through whom News
Express got to know
of Dr. Thorpe’s plight, said a few minutes ago. “We just came to check on him
only to be told that he died around 5pm. His body is still lying here close to
the railway station by Fagba Bus-Stop. We don’t even know what to do but I wish
there’s away to give him a befitting burial,” Happiday added.
News Express had called Happiday to relate the news
that help was finally on the way for Dr. Thorpe. Upon reading our story, Olola
Seun Akioye, a senior official at Environmental Rights Action (ERA), had sent
across a message: “Sir urgent, has the man been taken out of the street? Where
in Iju was he found? Can we get some hospitals to take him in?”
News Express had gotten to know about Dr. Thorpe’s
plight about 4pm today when Happiday, a Lagos-based journalist and company
executive raised an alarm on the troubled academic’s ordeal.
“Here lies a silver spoon
struggling with death, rejected, abandoned, unloved and unforgiven by his
family. This picture may be relevant to any of the followings: Major Mrs
Thorpe, Mr. Bode Thorpe and Ms. Gloria Adeyemi-Lawson. Does anyone know any of
the above mentioned? Kindly ask them to check that this is not their own
Olawunmi Thorpe,” Happiday, a Mass Communication graduate with two decades of
journalism and political activism before settling down to training of manpower
in the area of advertisement sales and self improvement courses, wrote on his
Facebook page.
According to Happiday, “Born
to a famous Abeokuta family, this man is almost dead and God have mercy! Can
someone please get the paternal or maternal family to collect this man, no
matter his many, many sins? God forgives and expects us to forgive too: even
Olawunmi. Don't let him die here, by the Iju Railway line please.”
Happiday soon uploaded the
photo of an almost lifeless Dr. Thorpe with the following message: “Born a
silver spoon, now see how this Ph.D holder is left to die in a heap of rubbish:
desolate, deserted and unloved. I understand that Dr. Olawunmi Thorpe holds a
Ph.D in English and once worked at thePunch newspapers. Can anyone who knows any
of eight (8) or so children please get them to pick their father and allow to
get a dignified last moment please?”
Happiday, CEO of the Ikoyi,
Lagos-based Myhappiday Communications, could not give details of how Dr. Thorpe
fell terribly on hard times.
He said in response to a
reader’s question in this regard: “There is really no time to ask these
questions and he is not even able to speak any more nor to get up and do the
normal conveniences. The pictures I have are worse but for decency sake, let's
get his paternal or maternal families to get him away from here please. If you
know any of them kindly contact them. I understand that he may be related to
the Thorpe and Adeyemi-Lawsons of Abeokuta, Ogun State.”
Contacted by News
Express, Happiday, who is a pastor, spoke of how he and another
pastor have on their own tried to help Dr. Thorpe.”
“Dr. Thorpe has lost speech
and is unable to get up to help himself,” said Happiday. “I have been involved
in efforts to get him off the street and have, in association with a co-pastor
been trying to get his family to attend to him but they would not bulge. His
case is clearly beyond tokenism now and so we need everyone's help to get his
family to pick him or the government in the alternative.”
*Photo, courtesy Larry
Happiday, shows the late Dr. Thorpe in the rubbish heap where he died this
evening.