If Mrs. Chinwe Obi, a staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Awka, had a premonition of her death, she didn’t show it; rather, she was busy making preparations to give her dear departed husband a befitting burial.
The husband, a business man based in Cotonou reportedly died in an in unclear circumstance a week before Chinwe’s death. He had come to visit his wife at their Olisa Onyeka Street, Awka apartment when he fell ill and died. His corpse is still at the morgue where Chinwe deposited it before she met with her death.
According to sources, Chinwe had invited three other women of her church, the Omega Power Ministry (OPM) for an all night special prayers. The first inkling that something could be amiss was when all calls put across to Chinwe’s telephone line went unanswered. Thereafter, her neighbours started perceiving a foul smell coming out from her apartment.
In a chat with Daily Times, Mrs. Ify Onyebumo, the landlady of the apartment where Chinwe lived for close to a year, disclosed that she was contacted on phone by one of her tenants saying they have been looking for the deceased since Sunday.
Onyebumuo noted that the tenant informed her that a foul smell and water was coming out from Chinwe’s room, adding that she had not picked her calls since Sunday.
A similar call was also placed to the caretaker of the house, Mr. Machie Ignatius to intimate him of the development going on at the house.
This prompted the landlady and the caretaker of the house to invite a detachment of policemen led by the Anambra State Police Commissioner of Police, Mr. Hassan Karma to the building.
On arrival, Karma took an inspection of the compound along with his officers and men of the command and ultimately forced one of the burglary proofs to a window open where the already decomposing bodies of the four women was discovered, clutching their Bibles.
An ambulance was called in and morticians evacuating the four corpses out of the building to the mortuary.
Simon Nwoye, one of the residents in the area who saw the corpses posited that the deceased could be victims of carbon monoxide inhalation.
”You could see from their faces and what I saw around the flat, they may have been killed by the smoke from the generator,” he said.
Mrs. Uloaku Madubugha, another neighbour who lives few buildings away from the scene noted that there is no suspicion of foul play in the death of the victims.
“If someone had broken into the flat, we would have seen evidence of breaking and entry, either through the window or through the door, but there was nothing like that,” she said.
The commissioner of Police in a chat withDaily Times also ruled out foul play in the death of the deceased, but said that investigations will be carried out to ascertain the cause of their death.
In his words, “It’s quite unfortunate; it is something nobody should pray for. There was no sign of violence on their bodies. We also saw a power generating set but there was no fuel in the tank; we also saw a pot of soup there, so we are suspecting carbon monoxide or food poisoning.
“The soup and their bodies would be examined; it is left for an autopsy to be carried out on them in order to find out what killed them,” he said.
One of the last people to see the deceased alive is a motor mechanic, who was contracted by the deceased to help get fuel for her generator; he shared with Daily Times events that preceded the discovery of the women’s corpses.
“When I came back from Onitsha, I went to see the woman who is my customer, only for her to tell me that her husband is dead and now in the mortuary, she later told me to buy fuel for her power generating set which I did; when I came back with the fuel, I saw three other women in her flat. It is shocking that these four women just died like that. In fact, it is difficult to believe this,” he lamented.
Sources said that Chinwe and her late husband had no children hence it was difficult to trace her relatives or the relatives of the other three dead women whose identities are yet to be revealed
