Politics

By Prosper Mene

During a tearful press conference that laid bare the raw wounds of grief, betrayal, and vicious family infighting, Christy Akingboye, the widow of prominent businessman and politician Bamidele Akingboye, vehemently denied any involvement in her husband’s tragic death. “My hands are clean.

I didn’t kill my husband. I loved him and stood by him through everything,” she declared, her voice steady despite the visible toll of weeks of silence and scrutiny.

Bamidele Akingboye, fondly known as OBA, passed away on August 28, 2025, at the age of 60 in their Victoria Garden City (VGC) residence in Lagos. The oil magnate and philanthropist, who had just contested as the Social Democratic Party (SDP) governorship candidate in Ondo State’s November 2024 election, his fifth political bid,left behind a legacy of maritime ventures, community upliftment, and unyielding ambition. But his death, initially shrouded in mystery, has spiraled into a public scandal, with police investigations, family accusations, and whispers of foul play turning what should have been a time of mourning into a courtroom drama.

Speaking to journalists in Lagos on Monday, Christy, 58, recounted the 34-year love story that began in faith and blossomed into a partnership of equals. “He was my Sweetheart, my husband, my best friend, my gossip partner,” she said, her eyes welling up. The couple, married since the early 1990s, weathered political storms, business battles, and personal hardships together. Yet, in his final months, Akingboye grappled privately with bipolar disorder, a condition exacerbated by mounting debts, including a N360 million land dispute refund and aggressive bank loan recalls, and the bruising defeat in Ondo.

CCTV footage from the morning of his death captured the heartbreaking truth: Akingboye, in a moment of profound despair, stepped off the balcony of their home. “My son Melvin screamed when he saw the footage. The police officers there saw it too. My husband jumped. It was his illness,” Christy revealed, echoing details from an emotional interview she gave in October.

But sympathy evaporated almost immediately. Enter Samuel Akingboye, Christy’s stepson from her husband’s first marriage, whom she raised as her own for decades. Samuel, now estranged, publicly accused her of orchestrating the death, igniting a firestorm that led to Christy’s detention alongside her biological children at Panti Police Station in September.

In harrowing accounts shared earlier this fall, Christy described the ordeal as a nightmare of dehumanization. “I was stripped, my clothes torn, my dignity shredded,” she alleged, claiming police, at the behest of family members, subjected her and her son to beatings and suffocation by inmates.abdb43 Samuel’s allegations, she insists, stem not from grief but greed, a calculated bid by extended family to seize control of Akingboye’s sprawling estate, including prime properties and business interests. “This is cruel, false, and deliberately orchestrated to smear me and my children,” Christy fumed during the press conference, vowing to pursue justice through legal channels.

The Lagos State Police Command, which treated the case as a potential homicide from the outset, has faced mounting pressure to release Christy and her children, citing insufficient evidence. A source close to the investigation told reporters that forensic reviews corroborated the suicide narrative, with no signs of external involvement. Yet, the family rift persists, with Samuel standing firm on his claims, reportedly backed by other relatives eyeing inheritance shares.

Christy’s emergence from silence marks a turning point, not just for her but for a narrative too often twisted by ambition and loss. As she fights for exoneration, her plea resonates beyond the courtroom: “I only want the truth to prevail.” For a woman who built a life on love and resilience, the battle now is to reclaim her husband’s memory from the shadows of suspicion and to remind the world that even titans fall, not by treachery, but by the quiet cruelties of the mind.