The second prosecution witness, Cordelia Onuwabhagbe, the grieving 56-year-old mother of late Augusta broke down in tears on Thursday while testifying in the murder trial of Benjamin Best Nnayereugo also known as “Killaboi”.
At the Lagos High Court sitting in Igbosere area of the Island, Mrs. Onuwabhagbe, a single mother of two, told trial judge, Justice Ibironke Harrison, how her only daughter developed a relationship with the defendant and what transpired in the hours leading to her death.
Led in evidence by the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Dr. Babajide Martins, the witness said, “my name is Cordelia Onuwabhagbe, and I’m a 56-year-old civil servant with 2 children, Hezekiah (26) & Augusta (who would have been 24 this year) but she was murdered.
“I know the defendant very well. On Dec 1, 2021, my daughter, Augusta sent me a message that she was in a romantic relationship with a boy., Benjamin Best Nnayereugo. As a single mother trying to be safe and careful, I asked her to bring him home and she did on Dec 8, 2021.
“When they came and because my daughter said she loved him, I accepted him as a son. He would often come to the house to eat and we would discuss even when Augusta was away in school as a final year, first class student of Lead City University, Ibadan studying Medical Lab Science.
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The witness testified that the relationship later showed signs of violence when the couple traveled together for vacation.
She said, “there was a time, on Nov 22, 2022 when they travelled out of the country together. I asked Benjamin how he made money for the travel and he said he won the money from Sporty Bet Platform and when I asked why he wasn’t investing it in his business, he said he sent some of the money for investment to his Uncle, Okeke Charles and the money for traveling was not much as they were travelling on economy and it was all low key.
“Seven days into the vacation, he mercilessly abused and beat my daughter, smashed her phone and pulled off her hair. When he beat her, he didn’t record it but when my daughter retaliated by angrily throwing pillows at him and calling him a wicked man, he recorded it and forwarded it to me.
“When they returned, he came to me, begged me and went to my son to kneel and also begged him. He said, Ma, I’m not a violent person and I won’t do this again. He said if he beat her again, she should walk out of the relationship. He left after that and Augusta begged on his behalf that we should give him a second chance so they continued with the relationship and violence never happened again”.
Mrs Onuwabhagbe also told the court that events took a disturbing turn in July 2023 when her daughter felt threatened by the defendant.
She said, “On Tuesday July 11, 2023, Benjamin called me around 9/10pm and said since I have been in a relationship with Augusta, she has never cheated on me but she’s planning to go cheat on me. I then asked, what happened? He said he impersonated somebody else and to test her loyalty, he asked her out on phone by inviting her to Lagos. He said without knowing it was him, she agreed to go to Lagos to spend time with someone else.
“I then told Benjamin that I did not raise my daughter like that but I also assured him that she was supposed to have rounded up in school and would come home in 2 weeks and we would settle the matter then. Immediately he dropped off the phone, my daughter called and said Benjamin had taken over her Instagram account and logged her out.
“Because she was an influencer, she begged me to tell him to give back her account after which their relationship could end immediately. I called him and he gave the account back to her the same day.
The witness further testified that her daughter later sent her troubling voice note that night about threats made by the defendant.
“On Sat. July 15, my son called and asked when last I spoke to his sister. I told him I had been chatting with her but when I called that Saturday morning the phone rang and she didn’t pick.
“He said I should go look for his sister because he had a bad feeling, he was seeing her shadow and he wasn’t happy. He directed me to go to Benjamin’s house and then I opened up to him that she had an argument with Benjamin and when I reached out to her around 11pm, she had sent a voice note that Benjamin is threatening her and had sworn by his mothers grave that he was going to “show” her.
“I didn’t know Benjamin’s house so my son reached out to Oyindamola, Augusta’s best friend in school to take us there. Oyindamola said it would be impossible to enter his estate except he sends us a code. I then called Augusta’s godmother, Mrs Bankole whose husband is a military officer so I made arrangements for a military man to go with us and 5 of us went to Oral Estate.
The witness went on to narrate how the group got to the defendant house and the incident of July 15, 2023 when she was allegedly murdered.
“When we we got to Oral Estate, the military officer explained to them at the gate that my daughter was not picking her phone calls but was replying to chats so they allowed us into the estate. When we got to his house, his gate was locked but my daughter’s car was parked in the compound. I thought they went out with his car and since It’s illegal for us to break into the compound, we went to the police station in Ajah to report and they gave us one officer to follow us who then ordered the estate police to break the padlock.
“All the windows were open and all the air conditioners in the house were on. Her car was intact and the keys were on the bonnet. The police said I should rent a ladder so they could climb up since the doors were locked. My brother got a ladder and because the police officers were not very proactive and it was getting dark, my brother climbed the ladder up to try and see if he could open the balcony.
“Whatever he saw at that point, he didn’t tell me, he later drove us home after saying that the next day, Sunday, we would go back and look for Augusta.
The witness broke down in tears while narrating how she later learnt the truth of what had happened to her daughter.
“After Sunday service I started pressing on my brother so we could go look for her. He asked to be allowed to eat and after a short while, Mrs Bankole came in. It was then my brother broke the news that Augusta was dead.
She said in her confusion she reached out to the defendant Benjamin, asking what her daughter did that made him kill her.
“He didn’t reply all through that Sunday. On Monday, Benjamin went online and confessed that he went into a heated argument with his girlfriend, @austa_xxo and mistakenly stabbed her to death. He said nobody should pity me, and that he will turn himself in to the police. He said, “I have N300m and I will turn myself in if it’s the only thing I can do for the family”.
“The next day, he started chatting me, saying it was a mistake and explaining what happened that led to the death of my daughter. I told him that there was nothing worth taking her life for. In our chat, he said, I’m sorry to me a few times and sometimes he would put the emoji, be strong while promising to take care of him.
“I told him that a stab is a mistake after which you immediately rush her to the hospital, and whether she lives or dies, I’ll take it as fate, but to stab her and go at large, it was not a mistake, it was premeditated.
“My son took over and asked him to come out of hiding but he never did. At a point, he said, Augusta has a sex tape. If I release it, it won’t make you look good because you have a church and I said, is that how much you love her that you want to even blackmail her in death?
“By August, I reached out to his uncle, Okeke Charles, by this time all the family members I knew had cloned their numbers such that you can’t call them but can only send a message. I sent a message. “Your nephew killed somebody and so far, no member of the family has shown up in my house. He told me that they are also processing the pain and still nobody called or showed up.
“By Sept. 9, 2023, I laid Augusta to rest and by Sept. 14, I went online on my Instagram and wrote, it’s been 2 months since you have been killed, Augusta and nobody came to see me, where is karma?
Benjamin subsequently replied from his page, saying “Karma doesn’t exist, I don’t believe in Karma, pay wickedness for wickedness”.
He then released online the video of Augusta he took while they were on vacation where she was throwing pillows at him and calling him a wicked man. He also wrote that he had been in a toxic relationship and said, “my baby would have been alive if not for her mother that was pimping her to rich men”. After that, he locked up his Instagram account and never came online again and we never heard any chat or reply from him there anymore.
“Afterwards he was declared wanted and arrested in Sierra Leone and my son was there for the arrest. Benjamin’s father entered Sierra Leone, Nov 20th & chatted with me for the first time.
“At the time of his arrest, Benjamin had a Sierra Leone passport which he bought for $25,000 bearing the name, Samuel Kanu Princeton.
“On Nov 26th, there was a prison break in Sierra Leone and he fled. Two weeks after the prison break, the authorities succeeded in returning all the prisoners back to prison, only Benjamin was missing. The video of when he was leaving prison is still on my phone till today.
“People online were giving me information about all the countries he was going to until he settled in Qatar. With the help of my lawyer, Femi Falana, the lawyer to the poor, he was arrested in Qatar on Jan 15th 2025 and in April 2025, he was extradited back to Nigeria with multiple passports on his person. For a long time, I never set my eyes on him until I saw him here in court yesterday, she concluded”
The DPP has told the court that several videos and chat messages forming part of its electronic evidence had only been served on the Defence counsel the previous day.
With the Defence counsel, Senior advocate of Nigeria, Marcel Oru asking for time to study the evidence, Justice Harrison adjourned till April 22 & 23 for cross examination of the witness.
