For Mrs. Uchenna Faith Okonkwo (nee Amara), a banker with Access Bank Plc, University of Nigeria, Nsukka branch, Sunday May 24, 2015 came like any other worship day. She had already prepared for the working week the previous day and so was ready to attend a church service and come home to take a full day rest.
A member of the Anglican Church, she attended the early morning service at the Church situated at Enugu Road, Nsukka and shortly after the service, Uchenna decided to go straight to the market to pick some vegetables with which to cook lunch for her family.
Unknown to her that she had few minutes live on planet earth, she quickly got home at about 9:45am and found her husband of six months in the house alone. Her Niece was also said to have left for church and so when Uchenna came into the house, she greeted her husband, took the condiments into the kitchen and went straight into her room to change her clothes.
After removing her jewelries, she pulled down her skirt, unzipped and removed the blouse and threw them on her room shutters. With her wrapper on the bed, she also unbuttoned her brassier and while she was removing it, she was attacked. A heavy flower vase was used to hit her at the back of her head. The attack did not give her any opportunity to shout. Her assailant immediately rushed her, grabbed her neck, squeezed it and eventually snuffed life out of her. In a few seconds, the young lady who just came into her house was lifeless.
The attacker hurriedly and briskly moved into another room, grabbed a brand new rope, formed it into a noose, tied it around the neck of the lifeless Uche, improvised a ladder, took the other end of the rope to the ceiling fan and began to pull in order to lift the dead body. The aim of the attacker was to make the whole episode look as if the lady committed suicide.
The attacker did his best to lift and make the body hang and dangle from the ceiling fan but could not due to her weight. And in utter desperation, he decided to allow the naked lifeless body of Uchenna kneel on her knees. In a bid to conceal the crime, her assailant quickly dressed up, locked the house and left. As he was going, he was announcing that he was on his way to church. The idea here was to get away from the scene of the crime and remain out until someone else comes in to meet the dead body.
After some hours, the assailant felt that someone must have seen the dead body and started going back to the house. When he came into the compound, other tenants had already come back from service and so some of them who were discussing outside their respective flat balconies exchanged pleasantries with him while he made straight to the top most flat.
According to one of the tenants who pleaded to remain anonymous, “shortly after the man went upstairs, he started screaming. He called us to come upstairs and see what he was seeing. Because I had known the kind of character he is, I was insisting that he tells me what the problem was but he screamed the more. When he refused to stop, myself and other tenants decided to go up because they lived at the topmost floor.
“My brother, when we got there, we were all shocked at what we saw. The shock didn't allow me to stay there any longer. I quickly moved downstairs to alert other persons in my house. The whole compound was thrown into confusion. As we were all panicking, the husband of the lady, Mr. Obinna Okonkwo put a call to his priest in their church who also arrived immediately at the scene of the incident. At that point, we were all convinced that the lady banker committed suicide”.
The Starlite gathered that while the people were all confused, the husband, Mr. Okonkwo was suggesting that the body of his wife be untied so she could be taken to the mortuary but there was the other opinion that the parents of the lady be contacted to put them in the know that their daughter had committed suicide. Perhaps that was where the trouble started for Obinna because the lady’s father sensed that there must be something wrong somewhere and asked that the body be allowed to remain as it was until he comes. The man said there was no reason for his daughter to go to the extreme case of committing suicide and immediately put a call to a medical doctor within Nsukka to proceed to the scene.
When the Doctor arrived, The Starlite was told that he noticed that the lady had some bruises on her face and that blood gushed out of the wound. Curiously, the Doctor discovered that the lady was in a different position when the injury was inflicted on her because according to him, he was miffed that rather than blood flowing down the face of the lady, the blood flowed backwards into her hair. The Doctor also observed that the wound at the back of her neck could not have been from the noose that was tied around her neck.
It was further observed that for a case of suicide to be complete, the person must be dangling on the rope adding that at the period of the commission of suicide, the person was supposed to have either excreted or urinated on herself and the tongue dangling out of her mouth but none of these sufficed in the case at hand.
These indicators which were pointed out by the medical personnel began to wear out the initial idea of suicide and began to wear the colour of culpable homicide. Though the investigation conducted by the Doctor sounded very convincing, there were still doubts in the minds of those around.
Shortly after the Doctor made his observation, a team of police men from Nsukka Urban Police Division arrived the scene, conducted their own investigation and doubted if actually Uchenna committed suicide. They asked the husband some preliminary questions among which was where he worshiped. He told the police that he worshiped at his Church at Enugu road. But earlier in his interaction with the Priest of the church, Obinna said he went to worship in one of the churches at Opi community in Nsukka local Government area.
Obinna had earlier told the Priest that he went to church and came back to see the corpse of his wife. But the Priest asked if he actually worshiped in his Church stressing that he (the Priest) did not see Obinna in the church. Obinna said he worshiped at Opi and that he went for a thanksgiving service of one of his friends.
With this conflicting reports, the police then asked Obinna to take them to the church where he worshiped at Opi but he was not willing to do so. The suspicion that he knew about the death of the wife began to grow stronger and stronger until the Priest took him aside where Obinna then confided in him that he was actually responsible for the death of his wife.
At that point, Obinna then painted graphically how he killed his wife and wanted to make it look as if she committed suicide.
Pressed further by the police on why he had to kill his wife whom he married barely six months ago, Obinna at first said that when his wife came back from church, she wanted to force him to take some drugs that will increase his sperm count but that he refused and thereafter, there was a fight that led to her death.
In another statement he said he was quarreling with his wife because the lady refused to make him her next of kin after they got married adding that he had severally asked her to change her name to Mrs. Okonkwo instead of her maiden name but that she refused to take the instruction.
In her own statement, the girl who lived with them in the same house and a Niece to the deceased and who pleaded not to have her name in print said that that morning before her sister was killed that Obinna was unnecessarily mounting pressure on her to prepare for church service quickly and leave the house. She stressed that all the while she lived with them, she had never been in good terms with Obinna.
“He had always been very hostile to me. When I greet him, he chooses when to reply and when not to. So, that fateful day, after my sister left for church, I was surprised when he came into the room and told me to get ready and leave the house for church so that I will not be late. Actually, I did and did not come back early unlike before otherwise I would have been the first person to see the corpse of my sister… (broke down in tears).
“All the while I lived with them, they were always quarreling and sometimes I told my sister that brother Obinna hated her but she would not believe me. She would always ask me to shut up”.
The Starlite gathered that Obinna who sells cosmetics at the Ogige market Nsukka and Uchenna who was then at the Enugu road branch of the Access bank Plc met sometimes in June 2014 and as they became friends, Obinna proposed to marry her. Inspite of other suitors who were asking her hand in marriage, The Starlite gathered that she chose to marry Obinna against the wish of a segment of her family.
When all the hurdles were cleared, Obinna who hails from Omor in Ayamelum Local Government area of Anambra State carried out the traditional marriage rites at the lady's Enugwu Abo town in Anambra state. After the traditional marriage, it was gathered that Obinna decided to relocate to his wife's self-contain accommodation near Alu Udele axis of Nsukka metropolis but not comfortable with the development, the wife requested that they look for another accommodation and by January this year, they found accommodation at the Umuezebi village along Orba road Nsukka where she was eventually murdered.
In the meantime, the remains of the lady had been buried in her parents' home town, Enugwu Abo, Anambra State while Obinna had been charged to court and subsequently remanded in prison custody.
Pix: Above is Mr. Obinna Okonkwo. Below is his late wife, Mrs. Uchenna (nee Amara)
