What is your relationship with Gospel Kinanee?
I’m the elder brother of Gospel Kinanee. We are from the same parents.
Tell us what happened to your brother.
Gospel went missing in 2007. He was around 14 years old when the incident happened. On that fateful day, we were all together during the day. In the afternoon, he went out to play with his peers. He came back home to eat and later went out again to play, but he never returned home.
We noticed he was missing around 8 pm or 9 pm when he did not come back home to sleep. My parents and everyone else were worried. We searched everywhere for him, but we could not find him.
Normally, when he goes outside to play, he comes back in the evening, but on that particular day, he went missing, and we could not find him. We waited till the following day for him to come back home because we thought maybe he had gone home with one of his friends to pass the night.
We continued the search the next day, but we still could not find him. We searched the entire community for him but could not find him. We thought it was a joke, but when the search continued for four days, and we still could not find him, we became more worried.
We searched everywhere, including police stations, hospitals, and prison yards. His disappearance led to the death of my father and mother. They both died the same year when the pain became too much for them to bear.
How did you find him?
As years passed by, we became tired of looking for him and gave up because we thought he was already dead. But to my surprise, early in 2025, I got a call from someone saying that some people were looking for me and that they had found my brother, Gospel.
I told them that my brother was dead because we had searched for him for years and given up, only for someone to call me 18 years later, saying he had been found.
So, I did not believe the person, but they told me that he was not dead and that they had found him in the Port Harcourt Correctional Centre.
They insisted that I come to the correctional centre and see him. I still didn’t believe them because we already thought he was dead, and maybe it was another person they saw and mistook for my brother.
They told me that he was discovered in the correctional centre by a group of lawyers who were on a prison welfare and inmate rehabilitation mission. They said I should come because my brother would be released to me.
