A Nigerian man is determined to defy time, a corrupt police force and inept government authorities to find his missing sister.
A Nigerian man is determined to defy time, a corrupt police force and inept government authorities to find his missing sister.
Obinna Okeke is a man at wit’s end. In supplication he asks for help. Over the phone from Nigeria’s Southern city of Port Harcourt, his voice is soft and subdued. But his words ring loud.
“Is Nigeria so bad that when a loved one goes missing, there’s little or no hope of finding the person? Please if there is any way you can help, please help me,” Mr. Okeke pleads. After a few seconds of deafening silence, he adds, “I have cried to everyone in government to help me, to help my aged parents who are sick from worrying over Ogechukwu. But no one cares. No one cares because it is not them this is happening to.”
For over three years Mr. Okeke, 42, has been searching for his kid sister, Ogechukwu Anthonia Okeke, who went missing on December 19, 2008. She was a National Youth Service Corps member posted to serve at Ilawe Town in Ekiti South West Local Government Area of Ekiti State in Nigeria’s South Western region. She was 27 years old at the time.
But since the incident of her disappearance in 2008, the Okeke family says no one has cared to help find her.
At a meeting in Port Harcourt a month before the third anniversary of Ogechukwu’s disappearance, his visibly distraught brother, Mr. Okeke, produced numerous copies of acknowledged letters he has written between January 2009 and November 2011. In the past three years, the Okeke family has written four petitions each to the Director General of the National Youth Service Corps; the Inspector General of Police; the Director General of the State Security Service; the Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria; the Attorney General of the Federation; the Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission; the Senate President; the Deputy Senate President; the Federal lawmaker representing his community; the Minister of Youth and Development; the Minister of Women Affairs; the Minister of Police Affairs; the Chairman of the Police Service Commission; the Enugu State Governor; the Ekiti State Governor; the Assistant Inspector General of Police Zone 8, Lokoja, Kogi State; the Commissioner of Police, Ekiti State Command; the Ekiti State director of the State Security Service; and the Ekiti State Coordinator of the National Youth Service Corps.
“The first letter by my lawyer was sent by courier. The second batch of 14 letters sent by courier went out from another lawyer while I was in Ekiti,” said Mr. Okeke. “Nothing was being done so I borrowed money and personally went to Abuja to deliver the third batch of letters. I made sure they were acknowledged as you can see. I left my number and contact. I was even on radio. This is now the fourth batch of 16 letters which have also being acknowledged. But she is yet to be found and the culprits are yet to be brought to book.”
A graduate of Chemical Engineering from the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Ogechukwu hails from Ezeagu Local Government Area of Enugu State, South-East Nigeria. According to her brother, the facts available to the family are as follows. In the early hours of that fateful December 19, a commercial motorcyclist named Theophilus Pius had picked up Ogechukwu from her residence in Ilawe as she planned to travel for the Christmas break. She had been patronizing Pius for months after discovering they were both from the same state. Pius was to convey her to the Ado Ekiti motor park where she and other corps members had agreed to meet to travel to the East. That was the last anyone heard or saw of her.
According to Ogechukwu’s phone call logs obtained from phone service providers MTN, only two people spoke to her on that Friday, December 19. One Julian Emeka Onyema was the last person to speak to her at 4:26 a.m.
“I called her but she did not pick her call. After some minutes, she now called me back and said why she didn’t pick was she was taking her bath and that the Okadaman [local parlance for commercial motorcyclist] she planned to pick her was there in her room. That was what she told me,” said Julian, a fellow corps member who served in the same local government with her. “We now said all of us should meet at the park. So on reaching the park after 5 a.m., when I called her line, her line was not going.”
Julian, popularly called Papa, was the President of the Catholic Corps members in Ilawe. He said he and other corps members including Ogechukwu had met during their last Community Development Service (CDS) of the year on Thursday, December 18. He said he was asked to organize a vehicle to convey them from Ilawe to the East. Ogechukwu, who was the NYSC Corps Liaison Officer (CLO) and also the Assistant Coordinator of the Nigerian Christian Corpers Fellowship (NCCF) in Ilawe, had then asked him to inform her early enough on the success of his effort, “so that she would discharge the Okadaman she would travel with to the Ado Park.”
He said later that Thursday evening he had sent out a text message to several corps members explaining his inability to secure a vehicle. His reason for calling Ogechukwu early the next morning was to ask her to help pass the message to her friend, a fellow corps member whom he had not informed.
Before Julian, the only other person to have spoken to Ogechukwu on the day she disappeared was Nnamdi Udoba, the NCCF President in Ekiti State who was serving in Ado Ekiti, the state capital. They had been in close and frequent communication throughout their NYSC year and the call logs show he called her last at 3:09 a.m. He said he called that early to be sure she was still travelling considering the next day, December 20, was the scheduled Local Government elections across the state.
“I called when I woke up in the morning about past 3 to see if she was still travelling because the election was supposed to be the next day on 20th. She said yes, that she was preparing as at that moment,” Udoba said. “So around to 6, I said let me confirm if she has finally boarded. That was when I tried and her line was not going through any longer. My presumption was that maybe it was because of the network and being on the road. It was not until the evening about past five that she didn’t call, much unlike her, that we got worried and tried to make contact to get to her family.”
It was on December 20 that Ogechukwu’s family learnt of her disappearance from Udoba. On December 21, the police in Ilawe aided by some corps members arrested Pius the Okadaman, who admitted picking Ogechukwu from home but claimed he dropped her off at the Ado Park around 5:30 a.m. His story did not check out as Ogechukwu’s name did not figure in any of the manifests obtained from the transport union. Besides, Julian who got there earlier, had been waiting but never sighted her.
By December 22, Mr. Okeke left his 6th month-pregnant wife and three children in Port Harcourt and travelled to Ekiti State. He remained there till March 17, 2009 searching for his sister.
It was while in Ekiti State that the police searched Pius’ house and discovered Sony Ericsson and Nokia phone batteries, a Sony Ericsson battery charger and two pairs of NYSC stockings allegedly belonging to Ogechukwu. Mr. Okeke and some corps members were present during the search conducted by three policemen from the Ekiti State Criminal Investigation Department, identified as Ariyo, Musa and Felix. Also found were the particulars of the motorcycle which Pius rode, bearing the name Alhaji Suleiman Lawal A., a self-confessed practicing herbalist. But while Pius told the Police that Alhaji Suleiman Lawal bought the motorcycle for him, the Alhaji denied knowing Pius, and instead claimed his motorcycle had been previously stolen. Police subsequently detained the Alhaji.
Several people aware of the incident, including police officers who served in Ekiti State, share a common suspicion that Ogechukwu had become a victim of ritual killings, said to be common during times of elections and festivities.
Mr. Okeke however observed that, once Alhaji Suleiman Lawal was arrested, the pace and mode of investigations by the police in Ekiti State seemed compromised. Through his lawyer in Port Harcourt, Chika O’pia-Adiele of Vintage Points & Associates, he petitioned the NYSC Director General and the Inspector General of Police to intervene. The IG through his Principal Staff Officer, Austin Obaedo, a Commissioner of Police, in a letter dated January 19, 2009, then ordered the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) of the Force Headquarters in Abuja “to take over this investigation and ensure a successful break through”. A team of investigators from Abuja then came to Ekiti State, but spent barely four hours and departed, Mr. Okeke said.
Frustrated, Mr. Okeke through Anyanwu Ray Maduabuchi & Co, a law firm based in Ado-Ekiti, sent out a second batch of letters dated February 25, 2009, to 14 key Federal and state government institutions and public figures, including the NYSC Director General, the Inspector General of Police, the Enugu and Ekiti State Governors, Ministers and National Assembly members, asking them to “please do more” to find his sister. The letters also sought a transfer of the case to “a more neutral ground” away from the suspects’ immediate area of influence.
On February 26, Ogechukwu’s NYSC colleagues (the 2008/2009 batch) finished their service. On that day Mr. Okeke cried in despair. He then took his plight to different print and radio media in early March. By March 17, 2009 the two suspects, Pius and Alhaji, along with the case file were transferred to the Force Headquarters in Abuja. The case was to be investigated anew by Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) Suleiman of the Special Investigation Unit. The new Investigating Police Officer (IPO) promised forensic analysis and that a detailed MTN request would be carried out. In the following months he began requesting the police in Ekiti to send over Ogechukwu’s belongings as well as other materials from Pius’ house.
Concerning the items found in the house during the initial police search, CSP Suleiman said Pius’ wife, an Ekiti State indigene, had defended and corroborated her husband that the things belonged to her. He said Pius claimed the two NYSC socks belonged to his wife who used to wear them while a student, before he impregnated her leading to her dropping out from school. The IPO dismissed the discovery of the phone batteries said to belong to Ogechukwu as not easily confirmable and a case of one person’s word against another. He said the police needed to carry out an independent analysis because they were later unable to trace Pius’ wife as she had left the house where she was living.
But CSP Suleiman’s findings are in conflict with the testimony of several of Ogechukwu’s colleagues who were directly involved in the search for her.
Ibrahim Joshua was the NCCF Coordinator in Ilawe while Ogechukwu was his assistant. He was emphatic that he was present during the search of Pius’ room when the police found the phone batteries. He said Pius claimed “he found the batteries along the way when he was riding on his Okada. He picked it and put inside his pocket.” Pius’ explanation of the NYSC socks, according to Joshua, was that he bought them for his children to be wearing to primary school.
Another corps member, John Okore, a medical doctor, was Ogechukwu’s neighbour. They lived in separate apartments in the same building given to them by the Ekiti South West Local Government. He was at the police station when investigators returned from Pius’ house with the exhibits. “When they came I was able to recognize my battery because that is the battery I have used for a long time. Tonia was my neighbour and she was using about two phones then, a Sony Ericsson and a Nokia. There was a time she collected my own battery for Nokia 1600 and put in her own phone,” said Dr. Okere in a telephone interview. He was certain he couldn’t be wrong.
“That is the battery I have used for a long time now. Actually there was no specific mark but there were other marks. If I see my battery I will know it. I normally bring out the battery and that’s my battery. I bought the phone in 2007 precisely and the event happened in 2008. So I was able to recognize it.” Dr. Okere said he did not know the battery type of Ogechukwu’s Sony Ericsson phone, but when they took the battery to a market and asked which phone uses that same battery, “[the traders] now brought out the exact type of Sony Ericsson phone Tonia was using.”
The Okeke family is also doubtful of the independent investigation undertaken by the SIU team headed by CSP Suleiman, who they believe just relied on the initial investigation done by the Criminal Investigation Department of the police in Ekiti State before the case was transferred to Abuja. Mr. Okeke remembers that after the police took his sister’s pant, brazier and toothbrush claiming it was for forensic testing, he travelled to Abuja and met CSP Suleiman in June 2009 who told him the result will be out in a month or two. It was then he discovered Pius was still in detention but the police had released Alhaji, without informing his family or the NYSC. He strongly began suspecting the police may have compromised in the search of his sister and the prosecution of the suspects.
Three years later, now in 2012, he is yet to know the police findings or the forensic tests results.
Adding to the suspicion is that several corps members who were knowledgeable of events around Ogechukwu’s disappearance were never contacted in the months the SIU was seemingly conducting their own investigation.
But CSP Suleiman maintained a thorough investigation was conducted. He said Pius had tried to implicate Alhaji but that documentary evidence obtained from the Police in Ekiti State showed he had reported his motorcycle stolen while working on his farm, nine months before Pius used it to kidnap Ogechukwu. He said Alhaji being an herbalist was no proof he was linked to the kidnap. Alhaji, he added, subsequently sued the police for N15 million for his alleged illegal detention of three months.
It is however curious that it took the police over six months from December 2008 to June 2009 to ‘realize’ that Alhaji had reported and documented at a police station in Ekiti State the theft of his motorcycle said to have occurred sometime in early 2008. Besides, in March 2009 the then Ekiti State Commissioner of Police (CP), Chris Ola, in media reports credited to him on Ogechukwu’s case never mentioned the existence of such ‘documentary evidence’ but rather stated “we are working on ritual killing and other clues that can lead to unraveling the incident and locating the corper.”
Sensing underhanded play and delay tactics employed by the police to break his resolve in following up on the case, Mr. Okeke in early September 2009 again petitioned for the third time to the NYSC DG, the Police IG, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, the DG SSS, Senate President David Mark, the Ekiti and Enugu State Governors, the Minister of Youth and Development and the Minister of Women Affairs. He also appealed to Donatus Ozomgbachi, the Federal lawmaker representing Ezeagu/Udi Federal Constituency of Enugu State, his home state. He was let down.
“I pleaded with him to talk to the House Committee Chairman on Police Affairs. I begged him to bring Ogechukwu’s matter to the floor of the House for any help to be given. What didn’t I do? He said ‘the police have tried their best but no one is God,’” Mr. Okeke said.
By this time Pius was still in detention in Abuja. The NYSC Director General through the director of Corps Welfare and Inspection, Dr. John Abhuere, subsequently wrote to the IG on September 14, asking for a “reinvigoration of the investigation of the case”.
The police eventually took action on the matter in November 2009 by returning Pius to Ekiti State to be charged to court for the kidnap of Ogechukwu. CSP Suleiman had mentioned that by police standards it may take up to six years before the trial of such cases begin. He said because Ogechukwu’s body was not found it would be unlawful to include a murder charge and added that within two weeks of his return to Abuja from Ekiti State, he personally wrote and dispatched the police investigation report, including forensic results and call logs, to the NYSC Headquarters in Abuja.
But an official of the NYSC Headquarters who pleaded anonymity said no police report as claimed by CSP Suleiman is in Ogechukwu’s file. Likewise, Andy Obarein, a deputy director in the NYSC Corps Welfare Unit in Ekiti State, confirmed to Mr. Okeke that no such police report was in their records.
Throughout this time Mr. Okeke’s efforts had been to find his sister and avoid telling his aged parents the truth that their last born of three children was missing. It was one year four months after his sister’s disappearance that he finally disclosed it to their parents. The news was devastating. His father, 82, suffered as stroke, while his mother, 60, developed high blood pressure.
For the next two years after Pius’ return to Ekiti State, the police kept the impression they were prosecuting the matter in court. On June 15, 2011, Mr. Okeke wrote to the Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission complaining of NYSC’s silent treatment. “The NYSC has never asked anything about my sister who they sent to serve her fatherland on behalf of the Federal Government much less coming to my parents to formally tell them that their daughter is missing,” he wrote. “We are left to our faith.”
Perhaps the NYSC was not too concerned about the disappearance of just one corps member. This was the view of some of Ogechukwu’s colleagues who mentioned how top NYSC Ekiti State officials queried in writing and victimized corps members like Ibrahim Joshua by denying them their discharge certificates and year book for openly voicing disappointment over the state authorities’ nonchalant attitude in the Ogechukwu case. It was late in the evening of the day of passing out, after other corps members had vacated, that Joshua and other corps members pleaded before they were given their certificates.
Troubled but unfazed, Mr. Okeke on November 1, 2011 petitioned for the fourth time to the DG and State Coordinator of the NYSC HQ and Ekiti State, the Police IG and CP in Ekiti State, the DG and State Director of the SSS in Abuja and Ekiti State, the Senate and Deputy Senate Presidents, the Ekiti and Enugu State Governors, the Minister of Youth and Development, the Minister of Police Affairs, and the Chairman of the Police Service Commission. Consequently, on October 25, 2011, the National Human Rights Commission and Mrs. Austin-Odigie, the legal adviser to the Minister of Youth and Development, which oversees the NYSC, both wrote the DG NYSC, Brigadier General Nnamdi Thomas Okore-Affia, to immediately act on Ogechukwu’s case.
Mr. Okore’s persistence led the NYSC to know how compromised the police have been in trying to ‘kill’ the case of his missing sister, as evidenced in a correspondence dated January 25, 2012 from the Ekiti State Ministry of Justice to the Ekiti State NYSC State Coordinator. For the past two years since November 2009 when Pius was returned to the state, the police had refused to submit the original case file to the Department of Public Prosecutions to “facilitate” his trial at the High Court.
“This office issued a Legal Advice to the police to the effect that the suspect, Theophilus Pius, has a case of kidnapping and murder of Okeke Antonia Ogechukwu to answer and requested for the release of the original case file of police investigations to us,” wrote Mr. Adeniyi Familoni, the director of Public Prosecutions. “Unfortunately, our demand for the original case file was not honored by the police until 18th October, 2011.”
Familoni also revealed that it was only on November 14, 2011 that Pius was arraigned before the Chief Magistrate Court in Ado-Ekiti which led to him being remanded at the Ado-Ekiti Federal Prisons, pending the determination of his bail application before the Ado High Court. February 13, 2012 has been fixed for the hearing of case listed as HCR/2c/2011 State Vs Theophilus Pius. Justice Michael Agbelusi of the Ikere High Court will preside over the case.
A legal observer said he was curious about the logic of charging Pius for murder, going by CSP Suleiman’s claim that it would be unlawful to charge him with murder since Ogechukwu’s body had not been found. Mr. Okeke also doubts the ability of the police to apprehend Pius should he elope if granted bail.
It has been three years since the Okeke family started looking for their missing loved one, seeking empathy or attention to their plight. For the first time in all these years a team of NYSC officials, led by Andy Obarein, a deputy director of the Corps Welfare Unit, visited the Okeke family in Port Harcourt on February 2, 2012, to present a letter of sympathy from the NYSC and a N250,000 cheque, which Mr. Okeke vehemently refused, but received after appeals from other family members.
Mr. Okeke says he and his family do not want pity. He is determined to locate his sister who he stubbornly believes is still alive. All he asks is for government authorities and Nigerian leaders to show they care and live up to the expectations of the people. His last words are for the police.
“Sincerely I am at a loss of words to use to describe the Nigeria Police. The police just messed up this case. Where and how do I begin to say what I have gone through, spent or lost all these years? I have suffered. But I won’t give up. I know my God lives and He will see me through,” said Mr. Okeke as his eyes swelled with tears. “I won’t give up. I will find Ogechukwu.”
