“I saw your missed call; I took some drugs that can made me sleeping.” This was the response to the message sent to Usifo Ataga by Rahman Saliu, the co-founder of the Super TV, that arose his curiosity and suspicions that something had gone awry.
Testifying on Monday before the Lagos State High Court, as the fifth prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of Ataga’s killers, co-founder Saliu testified that, his colleague’s spelling/written English is too impeccable for such incoherent response to his sms that was laced with bad grammar.
Rahman Saliu, who is a network engineer, also said, he expected a more robust response and even a call from Usifo Ataga because of an ongoing project they were doing together that had just been successful.
Another response of “Ok, great” further made him query who was at the other end responding to his messages.
He said, “That was when I knew something was happening because Michael would have jumped up, picked up his phone and called me immediately.”
Saliu told the court that: “The construction of that message was not Michael’s (Usifo Ataga) because Michael was very fluent in English. I knew that was not Michael’s typing; it was someone else.”
The software engineer again lamented how his friend and colleague Usifo Ataga, who he calls ‘Michael’, was “tied up and killed like a chicken, with multiple stab wounds to his ribs and surgery-like cuts to his neck.
Justice Yetunde Adesanya, the judge presiding over the case, has adjourned the trial till February 17, 2022.