EHIME ALEX, Lagos
The family of one Margaret Adiya Ikumu, from Oju community in Oju local government area of Benue state, has narrated the bitter story surrounding the death and burial of their sister without their knowing.
The awful story was contained in a release by Mr Tony Iji on Monday.
Margaret was reported to had allegedly died few days ago under the custody of Miss Marvellous Mary and Nneka Buddy (Facebook names).
To uncover the circumstances surrounding her death, the family had written a petition to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police to investigate the matter and bring the perpetrators to book.
This petition was published by other media and by NATIONAL ACCORD on May 16.
Below is the story as told by Tony Iji:
Few days ago, I released to the press a copy of a petition we wrote to the Lagos state police commissioner over the purported mysterious death of one of our young relations, Miss Margaret Adiya Ikumu and her eventual burial by her friends without the knowledge and consent of her family.
Genesis of the Story:
On Monday, May 11, 2020, we received a call from our relations from the village informing us about a Facebook information announcing the death of Margaret and requested that we should try to investigate to know what happened since her friends who made the announcement on Facebook were not ready to disclose to them the circumstances surrounding her death.
Through the help of Facebook, some of our relations were able extract contacts of two ladies, Marvelous Mary and Nneka Buddy who claimed to be Margaret’s friends, and they confirmed to us through chat that Margaret had a nose surgery but could not survive the operation. They told us that they were already making plans to bury her body on Thursday, May 14 on the ground that they had the instruction of the late Margaret not to allow members of her family to know anything about her death and that they were authorized by the deceased to bury her according to her wish.
We pleaded with them to provide us with details and circumstance of her death and how we can retrieve her corpse for burial, but they remained adamant and insisted on going ahead with their plans.
At this point, when we discovered that they were not ready to co-operate with the family, we organized a search team and for two days, they combed Lekki and Ajah area of Lagos where they told us she was staying with her friends but we could not lay hands on any useful clue.
We also visited some police stations on the Lagos Island to lay complaint but no police station wanted to entertain the issue since the exact address was not known. It was at this point that we contacted the Lagos state police command and we were advised to write a formal petition to the Lagos state police commissioner to enable him to assign the investigation to a unit to handle.
On Thursday, May 14, the two friends, Mary and Nneka, sent a message that the burial has been done. To make the game look real, the two ladies released a number of information to the family to show that the lady was dead and buried. Among pictures released as evidence were first of all her alleged corpse all rapped in the hospital where she was said to have died, a written note purportedly written by her instructing the girls to take possession of her corpse for burial without the involvement of her family, a picture of a casket they bought and a dug grave in preparatory for her burial.
After exhausting all other options open to us, we decided to follow the advice of the police to write a formal petition to the Lagos state police commissioner. The petition which I personally signed was submitted to the Commissioner on Friday, May 15, 2020 and copies released to the press. I did not only sign the petition, but personally took it to the commissioner’s office myself with the view to ensuring quick response in view of our initial suspicion that the lady may have fallen victim of some ritual killers.
By evening of May 15th, and morning of May 16th, the news about the incident had gone viral on social and other media platforms with the pictures of the alleged deceased and her two friends. The reason for the media bombardment was to smoke out the two ladies and their other conspirators.
To our surprised, in the evening of May 16th, the unexpected result from the massive media publicity happened, Margaret, the purported deceased was forced out of her hiding when she was noticed online through her Facebook which was offline throughout the period of her purported death.
When contacts were made to her on Facebook, she responded and later received phone calls from her mother and few of her uncles telling them that she did not know the reason for the obituary announcement on her Facebook wall.
Our findings.
Our findings show that the whole thing was a deliberate conspiracy by Margaret in connivance with her friends to stage-manage a fake story of her death to cause confusion in her immediate family and the larger society for whatever reason best known to them. Till now, we have not been able to extract from her, the reasons for her action because she is still largely incommunicado even though she has affirmed that she is alive.
We also discovered that the massive media publicity with her photographs along with the photographs of her friends must have forced her conspirators to back out of the conspiracy, having sensed that they were putting themselves in trouble by embarking on an unnecessary dangerous game. This must have prompted them to ask Margaret to come out of her hiding after realizing that they could no longer sustain the conspiracy in the face of the pressure being mounted against them. The pressure may also have been responsible for the decision by the two ladies to delete their Facebook accounts initially known to be Marvelous Mary and Nneka Buddy, with the view to blocking any traces that may lead to their arrest.
As we try to woo Margaret to physically come out of her hiding to explain the reasons for their unfortunate action, I seize this opportunity to express our regret for the irresponsible behavior of Margaret and her conspirators. We wish to appeal to everybody concerned and the general public to leave them to their conscience and their God for all the pains they must have inflicted on the society by their irresponsible action.
DISCLAIMER
The OPINION / COLUMN is authored by independent contributors to the National Accord Newspaper. While contributors adhere to our editorial guidelines, they are not employed by the National Accord Newspaper. The perspectives and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of the National Accord Newspaper or its staff.
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