Police and prison officials helped prevent Mr. Sunday Omotayo from taking his own life. The unemployed engineering graduate from the Ekiti State University was downcast due to his lack of job and felt he could put an end to his misery by taking his life.
The distraught man caused a scene along Wellington Bassey Way, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital, when he deliberately jumped out of a speeding Toyota Hiace bus, expecting to be crushed to death by other vehicles, said he was tired of life as he had been searching for a job for the past 10 years after graduation.
Some policemen, who were on patrol at the time of the incident, told correspondents that Omotayo had in the morning gone to the state prison asking the officials to either kill him or make way for him to rot in the prison.
A prison officer, who craved anonymity, told reporters that they saw him well dressed and wearing a tie running towards them. He added that his action forced them to become alert with their guns.
He said, “The next thing he said was ‘shoot me, shoot me, I want to die, I am tired of this world’. He added that otherwise, we should allow him to enter and die inside the prison.”
The official stated that Omotayo was later overpowered by the police, who counselled him and forced him into a bus heading towards the Ibom Plaza roundabout.
An eyewitness, Mr. Effiong Bassey, said Omotayo jumped from the bus into the major road for other vehicles to run over him.
Lying on the main road leading to Akwa Ibom Government House, It took a while for policemen to get him out of the road. He insisted that he must put an end to his poverty-stricken life by committing suicide.
Omotayo said, “There is no state that I have not gone to in search of a job in the past 10 years. I came to Akwa Ibom because this is my last hope because of the stories of Governor Godswill Akpabio and his uncommon transformation.
“I came with the hope that with what is going on in the state, getting a job would be easy so that I can begin to be a man. But since I came, I discovered that many people from Akwa Ibom are also crying because of poverty and joblessness.”
