Forty-three-year-old Audu Goyar Chime, native of Plateau State now
wears grief like a garment following the gruesome death of his wife,
Jummai, in a Boko Haram suicide bomb attack on December 11, in Jos, the
Plateau State capital.
Audu Goyar Chime, Jummai’s husband, is still dazed by the horror and shock of what happened to his wife. Having been married for 22 years, he sees her death as a big blow to the family. He recalled to Sunday Sun that it was after they had gone round the hospital, and could not locate her that they were asked to go to the mortuary to check
if her remains could be there. It was at the Plateau Hospital morgue
they found her corpse lying on the floor with others, yet to be claimed.
Recalling how he felt upon seeing the corpse of his wife in the mortuary, Audu said:
“I was devastated. If she was sick and died, it would have been easier
to bear than to find someone who left home hale and hearty dead in a
mortuary about 24 hours later. If I say it has been easy for me to bear,
I will be lying. When I went out today, it was to collect drugs from
the clinic to help my heart. I cannot think of how I will cater for six
children alone. I am a mason. I fend for my family from the proceeds I
make from working at construction sites. But lately business has been
bad.
We do not get much to do. It was this woman that was helping out from
the little she makes. She usually bought what we ate on her way back
home. The children are also not finding it easy to bear. The little one
cries throughout the night because he cannot get breast milk. We now
give him the food we eat and supplement it with Viju milk. When he gets
up in the night we give him Viju milk again. After whimpering for some
time, he sleeps off.”
He speaks further:
“I have been hearing about Boko Haram but never thought it will ever
come close to me or that I will ever become a victim. We are poor and
only going out to look for our own daily bread. If we decide to stay at home, nobody will come to our rescue. So, see what has become of us going to look for our daily bread.
“My appeal now is that people should assist me with a job. I do not want
to remove my children from school. I have three in secondary school and
two in primary. The eldest one needs to write his SSCE exams to be able
to further his studies. It is only the last one that is yet to start
school. I am now looking onto God to assist me. When their mother was
alive, she was assisting me with their feeding and schooling but now the
future looks bleak. Even though the traders were blamed for going to
that market, but my own wife was not selling there.
She was just unfortunate to be there at the time of the incident. She has no stall there. There is no way
one could have known that danger was lurking at a corner. Government
should know that any gathering can become a target for these evil
people. They attack churches and mosques. Can they also blame people for
going there? While my family learns to cope with this sad situation in
which we have found ourselves, we leave our fate in God’s hand. Just
like my son’s name, we believe God’s will be done.”
Until her death, Jummai, 36, an Irigwe woman, resided in the Jenta Adamu
area of Jos with her family. On the fateful day, she woke up early in
the morning, had the usual morning devotion
with her husband and children before leaving for Farin Gada, a popular
vegetable market, to buy cucumber, watermelon and pawpaw. Done with
making her purchases, Jummai returned home. After washing the whole
stock of fruits, she loaded her tray and set out to hawk, moving from
street to street, from Joseph Gomwalk Road to West of Mines, all around
Tafawa Balewa Street and eventually trekked up to Terminus roundabout, a
daily journey made for years.
Customers rewarded her industry and dedication with good patronage, such
that she often had to go back home to re-fill her tray of fruits for
more sales. But on that fateful Thursday, a female Boko Haram suicide
bomber was lurking in the corner, her weapon of mass destruction primed
and ready to explode. When she detonated the bomb around 6.30pm, Jummai
and many other people within the destructive range of the bomb were
killed.
Meanwhile, members of her family were unaware that she had died in the
explosion. As Sunday Sun learnt from her daughter, Faith, Jummai was not
known to return late from the market.
“By six in the evening, she was usually back home. What kept her till
6:30pm when the bomb exploded I do not know,” says her 15-year-old
daughter, an SS1 student of Christ the King College.
She continues:
“When I did not see her up till 7:00pm, I went down the road to look for
her. All the other women who went out to sell wares like her were all
back home. I went as far as Jenta Makeri to look for her but did not see
her. When I came back, the boys in the area also went out to check on her but came back with no news.
That night, nobody could sleep. We were awake throughout the night and
were hungry hoping she would come back with something for us to cook for
dinner. Before my mother died, my youngest brother, who is about one year
and two months old was still breastfeeding. He cried throughout the
night. In the morning, the search was taken to the various hospitals.
It was at one of the hospitals that we found her dead.
Faith further revealed that her mother was the pillar on which they all
rested, saying that the future of her siblings and herself now looks
bleak.
“Since the incident we have all been trying to live with the situation
but we know it will not be easy for us. Our major fear is not to be
withdrawn from school. This is because whenever our father did not have
any job to keep him busy, my mother was always catering for our family.
My elder brother, Dania, has completed his secondary education but
still wants to retake his SSCE examination, and is presently learning a
trade. Blessing, Junior and myself are in secondary schools while George
is still in primary; the youngest child, Godswill is still an infant.