More than four years after Lagos-based sound engineer, David Sunday Imoh, popularly known as “Dave Sound,” was lynched and set ablaze by a mob over a disputed N100 balance, his widow, Bolu, has revealed that the family had concluded plans to relocate to Canada just months before his brutal killing shattered their dreams forever.
Speaking exclusively to SaharaReporters on Tuesday night, hours after a Lagos State High Court sentenced three of the six convicts to death by hanging for their roles in the gruesome murder, Bolu recounted the life they had planned together.
She described her late husband as a peaceful, hardworking man whose only ambition was to provide a better future for his family.
Her emotional account came amid dramatic scenes inside the courtroom where one of the condemned convicts reportedly attempted to commit suicide by slitting his wrist and throat with a razor blade immediately after Justice I.O. Harrison pronounced the death sentence.
The attempt was foiled by prison officials and police officers, who rushed him out for medical treatment.
For Bolu, however, no judgment can erase the pain of losing the man she described as her greatest support system.
“I fondly called him Timmy,” she told SaharaReporters.
“He’s the father that anyone would wish to have. He’s the husband every woman would fight to have in her life.”
According to her, Imoh’s calm and cheerful disposition remained one of the qualities that drew people to him.
“David was always a peaceful person throughout his life. Nothing you did to him could keep him angry. He would rather laugh over any quarrel you were having with him,” she said.
“He had this smile that would make you wonder. You could be fighting with him and he would still be smiling.
“David could be going through issues that would make other people cry, but he would just laugh over them as though he didn’t have any problems.”
She described him as a man who never considered any honest work beneath him if it meant putting food on the family’s table.
“He was a caring father and a loving husband. Anything legal David could do to provide for us, he would do,” she said.
“He was my electrician, my mechanic, my carpenter and my welder. Tell me any legal job David would not do. He was a man of many trades and he mastered them all.”
According to Bolu, friends and neighbours always turned to her husband whenever they needed help because of his reliability and willingness to assist others.
“Whenever anything happened, the first person people wanted to call was David. That’s how dependable he was. That’s why I miss him so much,” she said.
But perhaps the greatest heartbreak, she said, was that their long-awaited escape from Nigeria had already been mapped out before tragedy struck.
“If he was alive, by August 2022 David would have travelled out of the country,” she said.
“The plan was for him to go first, then the children and I would join him later. We were planning to move to Canada.”
Beyond relocating abroad, Bolu said her husband had bigger dreams of establishing businesses that would secure the family’s future.
“He always wanted to build a particular kind of house. He also dreamed of owning his own mechanic workshop with a car wash attached.
“That dream is one thing I still pray God will help me fulfil, at least in his memory.”
As she reflected on life after his death, Bolu struggled to hold back tears while speaking about the emotional vacuum Imoh left behind.
“What I miss most is his smile and the assurance he always gave me that everything would be fine,” she said.
“He would tell me everything would be okay even when we both knew things were not okay.
“We always used to tell each other, ‘I got you.’
“But who has us now? Only God has us now.”
She said life has become an unending struggle since her husband’s death.
“I miss the way he helped me with chores. These days I struggle to do almost everything by myself,” Bolu said.
“I struggle to pay rent. I struggle to pay the children’s school fees. I struggle to pay bills.”
The widow also spoke about the painful reality of raising their two sons alone.
“Sometimes the younger one asks me questions that I don’t even know how to answer,” she said.
“The older one was just five years old when his father was killed. The younger one was only one year and five months old.
“Today they are nine and five.”
According to her, occasions such as Father’s Day remain among the most difficult moments for the family.
“When Father’s Day comes and all the children in school are celebrating their fathers, I don’t even know how to cope.
“It is a very big pain. Only God has been carrying us.”
She admitted that what she longs for most cannot be replaced by any court judgment.
“All I need is just his hug, but I can’t get it anymore,” she said painfully.
“I miss his assurances. I miss his words of encouragement. I even miss our arguments.
“Sometimes I just want someone to argue with or someone to cuddle with, but he’s not there anymore.
“The house is quiet. It still feels like a dream. I can’t explain it. It feels as though he has just stepped out, but someone has taken him away from us forever.”
On Tuesday, the Lagos State High Court finally brought the long-running murder trial to a close by convicting all six defendants on various charges.
Three of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging after being found guilty of conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and murder.
Two others were sentenced to 11 years and two months imprisonment each for conspiracy to murder and causing grievous bodily harm, while the sixth defendant received five years and six months imprisonment for inflicting grievous bodily harm.
SaharaReporters earlier reported that dramatic scenes erupted moments after the judgment when the first defendant, identified as the commercial motorcyclist whose dispute with Imoh over a N100 balance triggered the fatal attack, allegedly produced a razor blade inside the courtroom.
He reportedly slashed his wrist before attempting to cut his throat in what witnesses described as an apparent suicide attempt.
Prison officials and police officers immediately restrained him, while the trial judge directed that he be taken to hospital for treatment, noting that he must remain alive to serve the sentence imposed by the court.
The judgment closes one of Nigeria’s most shocking mob justice cases.
Imoh, a 37-year-old sound engineer with Legacy360 Band, was brutally beaten and set ablaze on Admiralty Way, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos, in May 2022 after an argument over a N100 balance with a commercial motorcycle rider escalated into mob violence.
Two of his colleagues, saxophonist Francis Olatunji and keyboardist Philip Balogun, also sustained severe injuries while trying to escape the attack.
The killing sparked nationwide outrage, with Nigerians demanding justice and renewed action against mob violence.
For Bolu and her children, however, Tuesday’s judgment represents justice delayed, but not a restoration of the future they had painstakingly planned.
The Canada relocation never happened. The mechanic workshop was never built. The dream house remains only a memory. And the man who constantly reassured his family with the words, “I got you,” never returned home.
