Nigeria: 26 years later: Gospel singer’s son speaks on father’s mysterious disappearance in Akure

By Zuleihat Owuiye, Nigeria

For 26 years, the Remilekun family has lived with a question that has no answer: What happened to Remilekun Amos?

The veteran gospel musician vanished in November 2000 after traveling to Akure, Ondo State, for a ministry engagement. He never returned home. Now his son, budding gospel singer Lekan Remilekun, is speaking out about the grief, uncertainty, and unanswered questions that have defined his family’s life since that day.

Speaking on the _Talk To B Podcast_ over the weekend, Lekan recounted the last known details of his father’s trip and the emotional weight of growing up without closure.

Remilekun Amos was a respected name in southwestern Nigeria’s gospel music scene in the late 1990s. Known for his soulful voice and frequent appearances at Christian gatherings, he had built a ministry that took him across churches and crusades.

In November 2000, he received an invitation to minister in Akure, the Ondo State capital. According to his son, that trip was meant to be routine.

“My father, Remilekun Amos, was declared missing when he went for that missionary journey in November 2000, and that was the end,” Lekan said. “He travelled to Akure after accepting an invitation to minister, but never returned home.”

That was the last time the family heard from him. Phone calls went unanswered. Visits to the venue yielded no clear information. Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to years.

No official explanation has ever emerged about what happened to him.

For Lekan, who was still young at the time, the absence shaped his entire life. Today, as a gospel artist himself, he says the mystery continues to follow him.

He referenced a Yoruba proverb to describe the pain: _“Omo ẹni kú, ó sàn ju ọmọ ẹni sọnù lọ.”_  

It means: “A dead child is better than a missing child.”

“A Yoruba proverb says, ‘A dead child is better than a missing child,’ and twenty-six years counting now,” he said on the podcast. “My children are asking me to tell them about Grandpa. No one can feel the pain more than the victim, which is me.”

The lack of closure, he explained, has been harder to bear than mourning would have been. Without a body, without answers, and without confirmation, the family has been suspended in grief.

Lekan said the emotional burden has not faded. If anything, it has grown heavier as the next generation begins asking questions.

“Instead of the pain reducing, it has increased because my children are asking me to tell them about Grandpa,” he said. “A grandfather they never had the opportunity to meet.”

He described living without knowing what became of his father as one of the greatest burdens of his life. Funerals, he noted, at least provide a point of finality. Disappearance provides none.

Friends, fellow musicians, and members of the Christian community who knew Remilekun Amos were also shocked by the disappearance. At the time, he was active and well-regarded. Yet despite efforts to trace him in Akure and beyond, nothing concrete was found.

Despite the tragedy, Lekan has followed in his father’s footsteps into gospel music. He says the memory of his father continues to shape his ministry and his music.

But the unfinished search remains. For 26 years, the family has held on to hope while also learning to live with uncertainty.

“We can’t stop mourning because we don’t know where to draw the line,” Lekan said. “There’s no grave to visit. There’s no story to finish. There’s just a question.”

Remilekun Amos’s case is one of many missing-person stories in Nigeria that fade from public attention but never leave the families behind. In 2000, there was no social media, no digital tracking, and limited resources for investigating disappearances outside major cities.

For the Remilekun family, the hope is simple: answers. Whether it is confirmation of what happened, or simply the truth, they say it would allow them to grieve properly and honor his memory.

Until then, Lekan says he will keep singing, keep ministering, and keep telling his father’s story — so that his children, and others, know the man who disappeared on a gospel mission and never came back.