Bereaved mother dies 7 months after dismissal of Oromoni case

Rosemary, the mother of Sylvester Oromoni, the deceased pre-teen secondary school student who was the subject of a high-profile bullying case involving Dowen College in Lagos, is dead.

The bereaved, a family source tells TheCable, passed away in late November after an intermittent blood pressure-related illness.

Rosemary’s passing comes a little over seven months after a special court in Lagos ruled against the family on the matter back in April.

Sylvester Oromoni controversially died on November 30, 2021, while still a student at Dowen College in Lekki Lagos.

His parents alleged that the boy, who was aged 12, was bullied, beaten up, and fed a chemical substance by five of his male colleagues.

Dowen College had dismissed the claim, stating that the late student only sustained injuries while playing football with his friends.

The Oromoni family had countered Dowen’s claim, arguing that their son had no pre-existing health challenges before the incident.

In January 2022, an initial autopsy declared that Oromoni Junior died of “acute lung injury due to chemical intoxication”.

This post-mortem was discredited due to its methods and some dissatisfactions surrounding the parties who witnessed the procedure.

The Lagos department of public prosecution (DPP) conducted a second autopsy which ruled that Oromoni died “naturally”.

The case was under inquiry in a coroner’s court from 2022 until last April when it got a final ruling.

Among the defendants of the case are the five accused teenage schoolboys of Dowen College.

They include Favour Benjamin, Micheal Kashamu, Edward Begue, Ansel Temile, and Kenneth Inyang.

All five boys were cleared and released from the juvenile home in 2022.

Several witnesses testified during the two-year pendency of the case, including doctors, students, Dowen staff, and the principal.

The father of the deceased Sylvester Oromoni (Snr) and the mother Rosemary also took to the witness box on several occasions.

Some of the Dowen employees involved in the case include Celina Uduak, Valentine Igboekweze, Hammed Ayomo Bariyu, Adesanya Olusesan Olusegun, and one Adeyemi, all of whom were initially accused of “negligent act causing harm” in the case.

Oromoni was buried on January 27, 2024, after the bereaved family opted to keep his corpse in the morgue as a protest gesture.

Mikhail Kadiri, the judge who presided over the coroner’s court, resolved that Oromoni died of sepsis emanating from an infection of the lungs and kidney caused by an ankle injury.

Kadiri attributed Oromoni’s death to “parental and medical negligence” and exonerated the authorities of Dowen College.

The coroner’s verdict also ruled that neither bullying nor chemical poisoning as alleged was responsible for the student’s death.

But the family and its legal representatives protested that the inquiry ignored “crucial evidence” in reaching its verdict.