Armed Robbers Kill Winner Of IBM Competition In Lagos

David Ntekim-Rex, a Computer Systems Engineer, has been shot dead by armed robbers in the Jibowu area of Lagos State.

The 22-year-old University of Lagos graduate was shot dead on Friday around 8pm.

Ntekim-Rex, said to have been working at Crevatal, a Financial Technology firm, as Product Designer, was son of Yewande Ntekim-Rex, a senior lecturer at the Department of English in UNILAG.

A Twitter user, @Magnanimous_, who claimed to be a relative of the deceased, said the police had delayed taking the victim to the hospital. He said they were more interested in why he was carrying a laptop.

He added that they took pictures while Ntekim-Rex was losing blood before finally taking him to Military Hospital, Yaba, where he was later referred to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), where he was pronounced dead.

“My ‘auntie’ has three sons. She’s always crazy about them. The middle child, David, is the most promising. He is a tech guy; very young, very brilliant. David was on his way home on Friday night when he was robbed, shot and killed around Jibowu. Please say a prayer for my aunt,” @Magnanimous_, said.

“David got shot around 8 pm. The police were called, David hadn’t died yet. The Nigerian police took pictures instead and were more concerned with why he, a tech guy, was carrying a laptop. Nigeria failed you, David.

“David was taken to the military hospital around the area. It took a senior nurse to come out and start checking for a pulse. He had lost a lot of blood at this point.

“The police then took David and his family to Sabo (police station), where they looked for the laptop that he had on him instead of giving them a police report. He was finally released to his family, and they got to LUTH around 12.30 am.

“He was there till the family was convinced he couldn’t be alive because he had no pulse. The country failed David. The doctors failed David. The police failed David. The system failed David. Rest in peace David Ntekim-Rex.”

However, Muyiwa Adejobi, spokesman of the police in the state, said the police was informed after the victim died.

“On January 15, 2021, we were informed around 11.20 pm. On getting to the scene, policemen met his lifeless body but relations insisted that he was not dead. So, police took him to Military Hospital, Yaba but the hospital said they could not treat him and then referred him to LUTH.

“He was accepted at LUTH and he was confirmed dead. The family returned to the police to get extracts at the station for mortuary. So, the allegation of the police abandoning him is not true. The incident is unfortunate and we sympathise with the family but we did what we could,” Adejobi told The Punch.

Ntekim-Rex, according to a 2018 statement by IBM, had beaten 17,000 others from around the world, including finalists from Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Nepal, and the United States to emerge as the co-regional winner of the annual Master the Mainframe competition, organised by AngelHack and IBM Z Academic Initiative.