By Correspondent Minna
A physically challenged Tennis player, Ishola Jelili Abiola, has
appealed to relevant government agencies to save him from “faceless individuals” desperately looking for ways of terminating his life and wipe out his entire family.
Narrating his ordeal to our correspondent in Minna, Abiola said that trouble started when his late mother went to the head of his family in Lagos to inform him about her plan to handover the documents of a land property left by his late father, Alhaji Ishola Tajudeen.
On how his mother was killed, he said: “I went to my mother on
the 15th of June, 2018 at No.
1 Dada street, mile12, Ketu Lagos before she was murdered to ask for the document of the land property”
“I was told by my mother, before her death, that my late father gave an instruction that the land property should be released to me when I clock 40 years. I was 41 and my mother told me that she was to let the head of the family be aware before she can hand it over to me.
“On 20th, June 2018 in the morning, my mother invited the head of the family to discuss about the issue before the documents can be handed over to me but unfortunately, the head of the family disagreed with my mother that the land documents cannot be hand over to me
alone, and my mother asked him why?”
Abiola said the head of the family simply told his mother that, as the head of the family, that is how he wanted it to be and that his
decision was final to which his mother challenged him,a development that caused her life on November 20, 2018.
The athlete said that he too would have been dead by now were it not for his coach who hid his identity from the assassins that visited one of his training pitches with the aim of snuffing life out of him.
He said the coach decided to interrogate the “unwanted
guests” and in the process, got to know that they were on an evil mission and so he immediately alerted him to hide.
Giving his background, the athlete said he is from Owode Local Government Area of Ogun state, struck by polio,married with three children,lone child of his parents, adding that his mother was murdered on account of the land willed to by his late father.
On his exploits in sports disclosed that he represented Nigeria in table tennis and won 2 medals for the country between 2005 and 2011 and also worked for Ogun State Sports Council as a contract player before the threat to his life in 2018 which made him to go into hiding.
Ishola, who walks with the aid of 2 crutches, 2 callipers
and sometimes on a wheelchair, depending on the day’s schedule said he had been working as disabled sports person;playing both Table Tennis and Lawn Tennis.
The athlete added that he won 2 Bronze medals for Nigeria in Kenya (Nairobi open) and in Ghana (Ghana open) respectively,as worked with Ogun state Sports Council as contract player between 2005 and 2012.
He said he regretted that, despite all the sacrifices he made for Nigeria, his life and that of his
immediate family had been constantly under threat, adding that his contract he signed with Kano State Government before he was forced to go into hiding would expire in 2021.
The athlete, who did not reveal his where about, said,”To avoid being killed, “I decided to flee because my life and that of my family is in danger just because of land property that my late father,Alhaji Ishola, left for me before he died in Owode Ibeshe, Ikorodu area Lagos.”
He further told our correspondent that the same people that murdered his mother were after his life and that of his entire family.
