From Ogbonnaya Ndukwe, Aba
A family’s joy that their deceased father had died at a ripe age of 85 and that they will bury him in style crashed last week, as the hearse carrying his body back home from the hospital where he died in Umuahia, Abia State, got involved in a fatal accident.
Wife of the deceased, Madam Elizabeth, and a motorcycle rider and his passenger, died in the process.
The deceased, whose name was given as Chief Joe Akuma Udo, from Ndi Odo section of Akanu Ohafia, Ohafia Local Government Area of the State, had been ill and was being treated in a hospital in Umuahia, with his wife looking after him.
Before his death on Sunday, July 19, Chief Udo, was said to have instructed his children not to embalm his body, rather to take it home immediately for burial. And it was in the process of obeying his wishes, the following day, that the vehicle taking his remains to his ancestral home, collided with a motorcycle rider, at Ndi Oji Aku Abam, a serene village in Arochukwu Council Area, about 20km from Ohafia, along the Bende/Ohafia highway.
Our source, further disclosed that when those involved in the accident were taken to a hospital in Ohafia, the Medical Director of the hospital refused to admit the man’s wife and two okada riders, after noticing the severe nature of their injuries and directed them to go to a bigger facility in Umuahia.
It was also alleged that one of the son of the deceased who undertook the journey to take his father’s body home for burial, was seriously injured and was in a private hospital in the area, while relations of the okadaman and his passenger, seized the octogenarian’s body and deposited it in a nearby mortuary, with hope of using it as a negotiating bait for compensation and the proper burial of the duo.
There was actually apprehension as nobody could fathom what happened and how it could be resolved.