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• Family alleges careless investigation,as NHRC, GBV taskforce demand justice
From Uchenna Inya, Abakaliki
Five years after Miss Nnenna Onu, a 35-year-old lady in Anike-Onicha, Onicha Local Government Area of Ebonyi State was brutally murdered and set ablaze in her father’s compound, her aged mother and younger sister are still battling trauma and the absence of justice.
Nnenna was killed on December 23, 2021 by a group of assailants suspected to have colluded with her paternal cousins.
The incident sparked outrage and wide condemnation from rights groups and the public. It was allegedly linked to a dispute over inheritance within the extended family.
Nnenna, the elder of two daughters – the only children of their mother – resisted attempts by some prominent kinsmen in the extended family to bury her father without the consent of his children.
The act, they claim, was intended to dispossess the sisters of their right to their father’s landed property.
Her resistance reportedly earned her multiple death threats, allegedly spearheaded by one of her senior cousins,
Nnenna’s younger sister, Juliet Ogonnaya Onu told Saturday Sun last week, that the family has lived in fear and agony since the incident.
She commended the police for arresting and arraigning one of the suspects on March 9, 2026, but lamented that other named suspects, were still at large and that the pace of investigation has been very slow.
She expressed disappointment over how the police handled one of the suspects, whom she alleged was the mastermind.
“Recently, the police called me and said they had in custody one of the accused persons I consider the prime suspect. He has been on the run since 2021,” she said.
“When I went to the station and made my statement, they asked him a few questions. After he denied involvement, he was allowed to go. He now brags that nothing will happen. I expected the police to detain and thoroughly interrogate him,” Julliet said
She further alleged that days before Nnenna’s murder, the same man she called a prime suspect had threatened the deceased.
“A few days before my sister’s murder, he came to our house and threatened that my sister would die with incomplete body parts,” she alleged.
She further alleged that after the killing, the assailants severed one of Nnenna’s legs.
“When my sister was killed, the assailants cut off and fled with one of her legs. I believe it was to present as evidence that they had carried out their agreement,” she alleged.
Beyond justice, Juliet appealed to the state government and human rights groups to help the family secure their inheritance and guarantee their safety.
“My mother is aged and traumatised. She is staying with me now, but she is homeless in the real sense because she has no home in her husband’s compound,” she said.
“She fled for her life after the incident due to threats from this same man and his cohorts, this same man who is currently bragging that nothing will happen to him. But she cannot continue to live in exile at her age.
“My mother has been displaced. In fact, she has been wandering for the past five years. She is homeless. She has been in exile for those past five years and none of them has ever asked.
“If this man does not have any hand in my sister’s death, I know by now the perpetrators would have been fished out. Justice should prevail because I don’t have doubts in my heart the way the matter is being treated.
“My mother is aging. And she has been traumatised. And she has been homeless. In fact, she doesn’t have a place to live right now, though she’s with me. She’s homeless and as it stands now, I want the state government, the traditional ruler, to compel my cousins to give my mother her own rights, her own inheritance in her husband’s compound.
“She will not continue to live in exile all the days of her life. Yes, and they should also be compelled to write an undertaking. That if anything happens to her, to me and my family, that they should be held responsible, as well as other undertakings”, she said,
She urged the authorities to prevail on the police to re-arrest and properly investigate he suspect they failed to detain, and to compel him and his alleged cohorts to sign an undertaking never to cause any harm on her, her mother or other members of her immediate family.
She also called on the traditional ruler of the community, Eze Ferdinand Okoronkwo Nwujor, and family stakeholders to release her mother’s share of the inheritance.
As of the time of filing this report, efforts to get the reaction of the Ebonyi State Police Command on the status of the case and the release of the suspect were unsuccessful.
However, the State Coordinator, Gender-based Violence Taskforce, Mrs. Faith-vin Nwanchor condemned all acts geared towards robbing female children of inheritance rights, stressing that there are laws, including the Ebonyi State Violence Against Persons Prohibition law (VAPP) and Supreme court rulings opposed to the practice.
She commended the National Human Rights Commission, the state Ministry of Justice, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Centre, Ebonyi State Family Law Centre and other rights institutions and organisations which have been following the matter and urged them to join forces in renewed effort to secure justice for the family.
Nwanchor assured that the Taskforce will continue to contribute all within its powers to ensure justice is served in the matter.
Also speaking with Saturday Sun in his office over the matter, the State Coordinator, National Human Right Commission (NHRC), Christopher Okorie, disclosed that the commission has been investigating the matter.
He said when the matter came to the commission, he hurriedly wrote to the police for intervention.
“The family came back to tell us the police were demanding such an outrageous amount of money from them to mobilise them for investigations and arrest. Since they said they knew who the suspects were, and they could point at them.
“Nnenna is a young girl of 30 something years. There are only two girls in the family. The sister lives here in Abakaliki. She is married and lives in Abakaliki. Nnenna lives at home with her mother.
“The father died. So, they are alleging that the father’s relations were not comfortable that the Nnenna’s are at home inheriting what their father left behind. That, as a woman, she has no right to inherit and they are the ones that are supposed to inherit what was left behind.
“So it’s almost as if they are alleging that even at the burial of their own father, that the siblings did not allow them a say. They fixed a date without informing them.
“In fact, when they made noise, they told them they were threatening them and all that, so much that the father was now eventually buried without their making inputs towards that. So it’s after the burial that the mother now decided to come to Abakaliki to stay with the daughter. Now, Nnenna was left alone in the house.
“So, in the middle of the night, the attackers went to her, killed her, chopped off one of her legs, and took all the property in the house, the mattress, the wrapper, clothes, her shoes, dropped it on her and set her body ablaze. So, the matter came here.
“We called on the police for investigation. We met with the then Chairman of Onicha Local Government, I can’t even remember his name now, the DPO of Onicha Local Government, all the village heads because that day they were having a security meeting.
“That was the day we were with NTA to cover the event. I spoke to the people about this. In fact, the chairman told the elders and those stakeholders, that he was giving them two weeks to fish out who committed that crime, otherwise, all of them would go in for it.
“With that kind of assurance, we had nothing to argue again. We left, and that was in 2022. From 2022, 2023 to last year, nothing happened on the matter. Everything died like nothing. So, we couldn’t take it again.
“We raised it with the last Commissioner of Police. We had to write another reminder because we had been writing reminders to the previous ones, and nothing was happening.
“We wrote to the last Commissioner of Police and she was touched by the situation. And she immediately ordered that the arrest should be effected. However, constraints came again. Who sponsors the police? Who provides logistics?
“So, when that was the issue, we had to write again to the Commissioner of Police and plead that if there’s any way the police could source funds for indigent situations like this. Is there no way it can be done? The Commissioner of Police graciously did something and managed to mobilise her boys and her girls to swoop into action.
“They did. And the suspect was arrested. And she is currently under prison detention for trial. She is undergoing trial. However, the allegation states that there is a primary, a key suspect who they claim sponsored the killing.
“So, eventually, the person was invited. I don’t know if the person was actually the prime suspect, but I think the police had given him some conditions to go and bring some other people or so, so that the matter would be continued. So, I think the police is still investigating the matter”, Okorie narrated.
He called for justice for the deceased and reintegration of her aged mother.
Now, there are other aspects in the matter of the reintegration or rehabilitation of this woman who has left her house in 2021. Well, it’s not that she’s not allowed. She’s allowed, but she’s not sure of her safety, her security. That’s the issue. She’s scared. She needs some level of assurance and guarantee, security guarantee, somebody to sign a surety for the people of the community, that they will be responsible for her security whenever she comes back to her home. She’s here in Abakaliki hanging out with her daughter on a mega salary. The daughter is a private school teacher and she’s doing nothing, no much income, so to speak.
“Meanwhile, she has economic trees lying up there wasting and falling away; the mangoes, the bush mangoes, the coconuts and so on. Who has been harvesting them?
“She can’t go to harvest those things because she’s scared. So, the community should come out and give her some level of assurance that she’s safe to live in her home as a law-abiding citizen. She has not committed any crime to deserve this.
“Thirdly, she needs rehabilitation. Yes, she had left her home for a long time and a lot of dilapidations must have happened. Nnenna was like a source of survival and succour to the family.
“So, the government should make provision for her rehabilitation. The local government of Onicha should make provision through the wife of the governor of Ebonyi State and through the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development.
“All these relevant partners should come together to think of how to rehabilitate this woman. It’s not about giving her a bag of rice or giving her N20,000. No!
“They should make a sustainable rehabilitation so that she can come to her home and live with dignity as a mother, as a grandmother, and as a citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a citizen of a state”, he stated.
