It is sad that at a momentous era as this in world history when the entire globe is endangered by the raging COVID-19 pandemic, Dumo Lulu-Briggs, the embattled Chairman of Platform Petroleum Limited is fixated on issuing misleading Press Statements against his widowed Stepmother just to serve his perverted purpose of undermining the Last Will and Testament of a father whose name he enjoys but whose legacy he is bent on destroying.
As inconveniencing as it is, and at the risk of joining Dumo down this route, it is important to expose the litany of falsehood contained in his recent statement dated 25th March, 2020.
It is important to say that Dumo was peddling falsehood when he said:
1. “Dr. Mrs Seinye O. B. Lulu-Briggs instituted a plethora of law suits to stop her husband’s burial.” The truth is that it was Dumo who first went to court both in Nigeria and in Ghana instituting a total of 15 lawsuits starting from April 2019 in Omoku, several in Port Harcourt, several in Accra and most recently in Abuja against his stepmother. All she has done so far is to defend herself against Dumo’s lawsuits.
2. That “Pastor David Ibiyeomie is biased because he attended the same secondary school with Dumo.” Dr. Mrs. Seinye O. B. Lulu-Briggs has never said Pastor David Ibiyeomie is biased. She acknowledges seeking his intervention in actualizing the burial of her husband following Dumo’s prolonged shiftiness. She maintains that it was right before Pastor David Ibiyeomie that Dumo threatened to accuse her of killing her husband if she didn’t give him what he considered as his father’s legacy assets. A threat he carried out within just a few days of the meeting. She has never said anything about secondary school because she has no idea what secondary school Pastor Ibiyeomie attended.
3. That “Seinye Lulu-Briggs challenged the position of the Amayanabo of Kalabari because he did not support her.” This is pure fallacy. Dr. Mrs. Seinye O. B. Lulu-Briggs has made no comment on the said letter by the Amayanabo. If anything, it was Dumo who compromised the intervention of the Amayanabo of Kalabari by walking out on the Committee convened by the Amayanabo, which was to see to the burial of the late High Chief. Dumo repeated the same strategy against the Committee convened by the Amayanabo of Abonnema on the intervention of His Excellency, the Rivers State Governor by ensuring his representatives never appeared before it after more than four consecutive invitations to them. Both Committees can readily confirm this fact.
4. That “Governor Wike said she insulted him…” This claim, as misunderstood as it was, was nevertheless apologized for. Her response on the same day the statement was made was that she was taken aback by it because the last meeting with the Governor in the course of his gracious intervention ended without rancour and with a resolution that each party should send settlement proposals to the Governor through the Attorney General of Rivers State. Dumo’s Settlement Proposal received by the Widow through the Rivers State Attorney General on the instruction of His Excellency, the Governor was a direct attempt to nullify his father’s Last Will and Testament.
5. The rest of the piece is dotted with mere inconsequential fallacies and are at best diversionary. We would rather stay focused on what matters.
Dumo’s inciting, misleading, manifestly false and diversionary reply did not address any of the issues raised by the Widow’s query of Dumo’s advertised Coroner’s Ruling. The issues she raised were that:
- The Registry of the court said no inquest was conducted. Yet the court gave a ruling on an inquest that was never conducted.
- The sole reliance of the singular statement by Ilaye Philemon, whose twisted statement was the only basis for the ruling without the cross-examination of any expert witness or the consideration of statements by the First Responders, the Kotoka Airport Clinic Paramedics who received the High Chief and attended to him while alive in Accra Ghana.
iii. The statement of the Doctor at the Airport Clinic who recorded his time of death in Ghana, that of the Pathologists who conducted his autopsy and declared that he died of natural causes or those of the other passengers including the Pilot and Crew of the VistaJet flight who confirmed that the High Chief arrived Ghana alive were also not considered.
- Statements by the High Chief’s son Datein Lulu-Briggs and his pastor, Apostle Zilly Aggrey, who were also on board that flight, were not considered.
- Ilaye Philemon was Dumo’s employee and Chief Bouncer at his defunct Illusions Night Club. It is instructive to note that Dumo did not deny that.
We would think that Dumo’s main focus would be to plan and bury his father especially after he has illegally obtained his body and has held it at an unknown location for over 4 weeks, away from the rest of the High Chief’s family.
Finally, could his feverish plot to take over his father’s assets, as he had tried to and failed during the good old man’s lifetime, not raise the alarm for a thorough probe of his private meeting with his father a day before he died, given that he Dumo has consistently hammered on the need for further toxicology to find traces of poisons in his father’s body even after the autopsy that he instigated was conclusive on his cause of death? Did he put anything there that he is looking for? Why is he adamant on setting aside his father’s Will?
Oraye St. Franklyn
Spokesman,
Dr. Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs
