Pus still comes out of his stomach one year after he was shot four times by a group of armed men in Asaba, the Delta State capital.
Onuora Ndubisi is currently almost useless to himself and his family as he can barely do anything with his two hands, nor does he see clearly.
Pus still comes out of his stomach one year after he was shot four times by a group of armed men in Asaba, the Delta State capital.
It was in May 2021 that Ndubisi was shot in the head, stomach and two hands at Ofimax Hotel behind NTA Road, Asaba over a case he said he was never aware of nor involved in.
Narrating his ordeal to SaharaReporters in tears, Ndubisi said unknown to him, his cousin got involved in a tussle with one Emma Ojugbana over a lady whose parents lived in Lagos but was in school in Imo State. She was reportedly in Asaba for a business he (Ndubisi) said he did not know, but that she eventually met her untimely death.
On the day the incident occurred, Ndubisi said he went to a barbershop in Asaba metropolis along with his friend, Lugard Nwabuike, to have a haircut and that the cousin called him countless times.
“He was calling me to come to NTA Road at the Ofimax Hotel without notifying me of what was going on.
“I had to leave the barbing salon and rush to the place. Immediately I got to the hotel at the back of NTA, I saw him engaging in an argument with one guy I know, Emma Ojugbana, who is from the same quarters with me, Umuezei, over a lady I don’t know who had lodged in the hotel there,” he said.
Ndubisi said he immediately asked Emma why he was fighting with his cousin, knowing that they were both from the same quarters. But while he was still speaking with Emma, he (Ndubisi) said his cousin had stabbed one of them with a broken bottle.
He continued, “While I was still asking what was happening, I did not know that they had already conspired against me and were waiting for me over nothing.
Immediately I turned back, they shot me in the back of the head and I fell down. Then they shot my friend, Lugard in the leg but he managed to escape.
“They shot the lady in question in the stomach and she later died because hospitals could not attend to her early enough because her parents were based in Lagos while she schooled in Owerri. I don’t know what she came to do in Asaba, lodging in the Ofimax Hotel.”
Lying on the ground in the pool of his own blood, Ndubisi thought that his attackers had left him but “they came back to me where I was struggling on the ground and changed their gun magazine and shot at me three more times in the stomach and two hands.”
In a croaky voice with dripping tears, Ndubisi said he was admitted to New General Hospital, Asaba where he has been receiving treatment.
“I could not see and the doctor had said that I would never see again in my entire life but fortunately, I started seeing gradually. But till now, I could not see clearly because the doctor told me that all the veins in my eyes had shrunk. I have gone to an eye clinic several times and spent money but they said they cannot do anything about it and that I should do brain surgery,” he said.
But that was not the end of the matter as Ndubisi said that one day, his younger brother, Chukwuka Junior, told him that some people showed him (the younger brother) the guys who shot him.
“My brother alerted some people around and the guys wanted to escape but two of them were caught, and they had battle axes, while one of them who was carrying a bag suspected to contain their guns escaped.
“We took the ones we caught to the GRA Police Station because I recognised them. At the station, one of them said their boss owns the house where they live and that he was the one who shot me with his other gang members.
“He mentioned their names, saying Joeflex is their boss. Others are Emma Ojugbana, Odion Possibility and Pablo. He said that he knows their leader’s house and that he knows he could be caught,” he said.
But Ndubisi’s matter was made worse by the police who, according to him, collected over N40,000 from him for fuel and other logistics in order to arrest the leader of the gang, Joeflex. But when one of the two persons they caught took them to the man’s house, the police officers refused to go inside to arrest the suspect for reasons unknown to the victim.
He said the police also released one of the two suspects who were in their custody without any explanation to him.
“Every time I went to the police station with the bullet injury, they would tell me to pay them mobilisation fee and buy fuel for them and I paid over N40,000 and we drove to the house where the boy showed us.
“He told the police officers that their leader was inside the house but rather than go in to arrest him, the police officers said we should hang around until he would come out. We were there for hours and the gang leader did not come out. When we left, I still gave the officers money.
“Unfortunately, my stomach was not getting better but the police were busy extorting money from me despite all the pain I was going through. At a point, I stopped going to the police and after some time, the police released one of the two boys we handed over to them and charged one to court.
“The court then called me and told me when to come. On the date they gave me, I went to the court but they asked me to stay outside. I sat outside while proceedings were going on inside the court. I was outside the court till 1 pm and they did not call me.
“I called the lawyer they provided for me and told her that I was tired of waiting because my body was shivering but she gave me N1,000 to go and eat. I could not eat because I was vomiting and so, they got ‘Keke Napep’ (commercial tricycle) to take me home.
“Since that time, the court would send me a message informing me of the sitting date but when I called the lawyer, she would tell me that they had adjourned the case. It continued like that every month till now,” Ndubisi explained.
When SaharaReporters contacted the police officer who Ndubisi said is in charge of the case, SUPOL Dickson in the State Criminal Investigation Department (C.I.D), about the case, he told our reporter to go to the State CID or contact the state police public relations officer for detailed information on the matter.
“Come to State CID, Asaba or get in touch with the PPRO, Delta State Command for details instead of the wrong information at your disposal,” SUPOL Dickson sent in a text message.
When our reporter contacted the spokesperson for the state police command, DSP Bright Edafe, he noted that the matter was already in court.
But when our reporter explained complaints by the victim that he was being extorted by the police, failure to arrest the gang leader, the release of one of the suspects from custody and how he had allegedly been tactically prevented from having access to the court, Edafe denied the release of any of suspects arrested in connection to the case.
“Both of them are in prison,” he said.
But presently, Ndubisi is suffering and the wound in his stomach is bringing out pus.
“I have gone to many places and they told me it is an internal injury and that it will take time to heal, but I don’t know how long that will be.
“As I am now, I feel like I can die any time soon because the bullets have damaged a lot of things in my body. I cannot work again because where they shot me in my palms has made it impossible for me to work, coupled with the fact that I can barely see,” he said resignedly.