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From Wilson Okereke, Afikpo
An aged widow, Mrs. Agnes Onu Nwokorie, whose 35-year-old daughter, Nnennaya, was murdered by her kinsmen in December 2021 at Anike village, Onicha Igboeze, Onicha Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, has said that the innocent blood of the victim still cries for justice.
The mother of two daughters, Nnennaya and Juliet, said some family members moved against her and her daughters because she had no male child.
Four years after, the traumatised woman and her surviving daughter, Mrs. Juliet Ogonnaya Onu, are appealing to the Ebonyi State Governor, Rt. Hon. Francis Nwifuru, the state commissioner of police and civil society organisations to help them secure justice for the deceased.
According to her, trouble started when some of their family members began to seize their parcels of land and economic trees after her husband died in 2018.
She recalled that, as part of the strategies, they had planned to bury her husband without involving her and her children before Nnennaya saw through the plot and dragged them before the Family Law Centre, Abakaliki, which restrained them.
Mrs. Agnes said that the maltreatment of her family had defied all adjudications at the community level, which prompted her daughter to, again, report the matter to the Family Law Centre. The centre then served an injunction on the family members, including her brother-in-law, Okoro Nwokorie, now late.
She said the people saw Nnennaya’s action as an affront and vowed to deal with her: “Before the death of my brother-in-law, Mr. Okoro Nwokorie, he had denied me access to my husband’s pieces of land severally and also sold my cassava plot for N9,000 to another villager without being questioned by anybody.
“That was how we were suffering in the hands of the people that were ideally supposed to be our shield, until when my daughter decided to engage them in two separate legal battles over the enormous deprivations and, in the process, we attained some level of freedom.”
She alleged that her promising and courageous daughter was murdered in broad daylight on the fateful day because they saw her as a threat.
Mrs. Agnes also alleged that the six suspected killers are still moving freely in the community after committing the heinous crime.
Her surviving daughter, Mrs. Juliet Ogonnaya Onu, claimed that her late father’s sister, whose name was not given, publicly threatened on several occasions to eliminate the deceased. She alleged that another family member actually paid money for her sister to be murdered: “When the assailants met my sister in our compound while she was frying garri, she did not envisage any misfortune, as almost all the people were her relatives and kinsmen.
“She even served them food and pawpaw before they eventually attacked her; clubbed her to death and set the body ablaze.”
According to her, when the assailants disclosed their intention to her sister after eating her food, the deceased originally did not take their pronouncement seriously.
It was when she saw their meanness that she started running for her dear life. The men gave her a hot chase and hit her to death with all manner of weapons before severing her head and left, leg which they allegedly presented as a trophy to their sponsor.
It did not end there. Mrs. Juliet Ogonnaya Onu stated that they dragged her sister’s remains to the back of the compound where they heaped all the valuables in the home on top of the lifeless body and set everything on fire.
She alleged that there was a high level of conspiracy among the villagers as those who witnessed the brutal killing looked the other way, instead of alerting soldiers at a nearby military checkpoint.
She further disclosed that her mother was also supposed to have been eliminated too but for providence which took her to Abakaliki for medical treatment at the time: “If my own relatives could kill my only sister in this painful manner as if she was caught alive in a war zone or had committed any evil, truly, the perpetrators are heartless vampires.”
A resident of Anike Onicha village who wished not to be named corroborated the story and wondered why the authorities had failed to prosecute the culprits.
He disclosed that the decomposing body of the deceased was abandoned at the scene by the villagers from the day of the incident till the night of December 25, 2021, when the lady’s brother-in-law from a neighbouring community, visited the place and notified the security agencies.
The man also suggested that the culprits could easily be apprehended through the effort of the village executive and other stakeholders as their whereabouts were known to the people.
He said: “The people in charge are treating this matter as if it has become a crime to give birth to only female children, forgetting that a similar issue could likely happen again, if the situation is not adequately handled. This is why I am appealing that the government should live up to its responsibility by making the criminals face the wrath of the law.”
