Chinwe
Obi, a staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),
Awka,
was busy making preparations to give her dear departed husband a
befitting burial when she mysteriously died alongside three other women.
The husband, a business man based in Cotonou
reportedly died in a 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.
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 with Daily 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.