A Mr. Marcel Ossai Aba who was brutally murdered with his wife, Jacinta, at the Amaja area in Enugu Ezike about eight days ago might just have been slaughtered by kidnappers.
Vanguard tells the story; Aba was sleeping with his wife and three children penultimate week when some unknown persons woke him up and broke his head with a cutlass.
The assailants later went into his wife’s room and removed her one-year-old daughter who she was breast feeding before severing her head. The assailants left the scene of crime without removing any material or property.
However, investigations by the publication revealed that Aba and his wife were killed after an abducted man from Anambra State was rescued by the police in a bush near his house.
Those who spoke on the condition of anonymity at Amaja, apprised that an unidentified man whose mouth was covered with a black cloth, was seen in a bush which separates the village from Amaja with Adupi in Benue State.
Aba lived at the border with his family. It was gathered that another woman had found the abducted man and ran back to inform her husband who consequently alerted members of the vigilante group in the area.
The members of the vigilante were also said to have alerted the nearest police station in the area, which sent detectives to free the kidnap victim. It was gathered that the abductors of the unidentified victim usually visited him between 2 am and 3.30 am each day to feed him.
However, sources said that when the kidnappers visited the area where they hid their victim in the bush, they were disappointed that the people living nearby alerted the police men who untied their victim and went to the nearby house to kill the couple.
An 11 year old daughter of the deceased, Chinonso narrated how her parents were killed in cold when her parents were killed at the palace of the Onyishi Amaja, Eze Nwidoko, where the people of the area returned en- masse to discuss the strange development weekend said that the assailants killed her father before killed her mother.
”We were sleeping in the night when my mother noticed that some people were flashing their torches outside but were not talking.As she was talking, the people came into our room and took her baby who was sucking her breast away from her and threw him to Ikedi, 5, before cutting my mother’s neck.
”The whole place was dark, We did not know when they left, After waiting for sometime I went to my father’s room and saw that his head was also cut, I used the lantern which was lit by mother before we went to bed. Later I came out with Ikedi but the whole place was still dark,”It was later in the morning that we called those nearby who started shouting and calling others to come and see what had happened,” Chinonso who was carrying the last child of her mother said.
The traditional ruler of Amaja, Igwe Ignatius Idoko, aka Atlas, said that his community was the most neglected border area in the state:
”We have been appealing to the relevant authorities to establish a police station between us and the people of Benue and Kogi states who are our neighbours.
Igwe Idoko who took Vanguard on a motorcycle to the family house of the deceased couple where it was discovered that the door leading to the man’s room was opened by the deceased for his assailants while the one leading to his wife’s own was broken has vowed that the community would leave no stone unturned to get at the root of the matter.
Onyishi Idoko Igwe Idoko said that the couple had died for the liberation of the people of Amaja just as Jesus died for the liberation of mankind adding that the people would cooperate with security agencies to ensure that justice was done.
