By Emeka Chiaghanam
The building with the brown-colour gate under lock in Arah Village Nise in Awka South LGA, Anambra State, Eastern Nigeria, is the epicenre of the incident that claimed the lives of three children: two boys and a girl, on Saturday, 4th January 2025.
The fenced building, belonging
to Mr. Lawrence Eze, is surrounded by an unplastered brick wall, which has
darkened in colour due to accumulated dirt is situated along an untarred road
that branches from a major route cutting across Arah Village. The fenced building
and the neighbourhood evoked overwhelming calmness, often punctuated
occasionally by one or more people entering or leaving adjacent buildings or by
commercial motorcyclists known as Okada and cars.
A peek through the gate
revealed a compound slightly bigger than a standard basketball court. At the
cenre of the property is an unpainted bungalow flanked on the left towards the
fence by banana and plantain plants, and on the right, in front of the house
veranda, was a faded blue Mercedes Benz C-Class car, inside which the children
died.
Mr. Eze, a native doctor, found
his three children dead in his Mercedes Benz C-Class car on Saturday afternoon
at about 4 pm. Mr. Eze was reportedly said to have raised the alarm.
On inquiry, it was said that he
had locked the children inside and left with the gate's padlock key to buy some
items. He never mentioned nor disclosed the location where he went to make the
purchase.
It was gathered that he
returned and discovered that his children were nowhere to be found. He searched
for them even outside the building and went back into the house, only to later
find them dead inside the car. That was when he reportedly raised an alarm that
drew people to his house. While this happened, it was confirmed that Mr. Eze's
wife, a native of the neighbouring town of Nibo, was at Eke Nibo Market engaged
in her petty trade and unaware of the tragedy that had befallen her family. It
was reliably gathered that the heartbroken woman was taken away by her
relations after the children's burial on Sunday.
Efforts to obtain Mr. Eze's
contact from neighbours failed, as they claimed that Mr. Eze was not on
speaking terms with them, and they were surprised to see him leave his house
Monday afternoon with a traveling bag.
A neighbour familiar with the
Eze family said nobody knew how it happened. According to him, "We were at
a traditional wedding when the news broke that some people scaled Mr. Eze's
fence, and it was later discovered that his three children were found
dead." He asked Mr. Eze what happened and recounted that Mr. Eze explained
that he left the house with the gate locked, and when he came back, he looked
for his children but couldn’t find them. "Mr. Eze stated, leaning on his
car, wondering where they could be, and at a point, he looked inside the car and
saw his children lifeless."
The neighbour asked Mr. Eze if
the car was initially locked, but he gave no clear answer. The neighbour
expressed doubt about Mr. Eze’s account, stating that he doesn’t understand how
Mr. Eze’s car was opened and how some people came after he left the house,
couldn’t find him, and killed the children. "I don’t know what to make of
what he told me. The next thing he said was that he wanted his children buried
and that he didn’t want a case. Mr. Eze should be the prime suspect in this
case, where his body language didn’t reflect the gravity of what happened. If
it was someone else, they might feel like ending their lives over such a loss.
All he was saying was that he doesn’t want a case, he doesn’t want the Police
involved in it."
The neighbour further stated
that Mr. Eze was eventually forced to the police station, where he was asked
who his neighbours were. He answered that he wasn’t on speaking terms with any
of them. "What Mr. Eze said was true; he has issues with all his
neighbours. A day before the incident, his elder brother, who lives four houses
away from him, said for the first time after many years of not being on
speaking terms that Mr. Eze called him, wishing him a Happy New Year and that
they should settle their differences. He was trying to make peace with his
brother. What I don’t get is that he made peace with his brother, and a day after,
his three children died."
"I want the police, the
town’s traditional ruler and president-general involved in this case. Look
across the street, adjacent to Mr. Lawrence Eze’s house, there is a CCTV camera
mounted on the solar-powered streetlight by relation, the late Prof. Anthony
Eze, a former lecturer at the Faculty of Education of Nnamdi Azikiwe University,
Awka, with whom Mr. Lawrence Eze was also not on speaking terms."
The neighbour declared that Mr.
Lawrence Eze should be investigated to ascertain if he was the person who
killed his children, pointing out that if the CCTV footage is reviewed, it
could reveal if some people scaled his fence. The neighbour further stated that
it was like a scene where the children were drugged and used for whatever they
were intended to be used for. "Some people argued that Mr. Eze killed his
children and locked them in the car before leaving the house to buy whatever he
claimed to go and purchase that he didn’t disclose to anybody. If we can get
Prof. Eze’s wife to review the CCTV footage, it would tell if anyone scaled Mr.
Eze’s fence. Such person or persons could be traced and interrogated," he
said.
Another neighbour, who affirmed
that the incident happened on Saturday afternoon and the children were buried
on Sunday, stated that he was at a meeting not far from Mr. Eze’s house when a
member of the vigilante came to tell them what had happened at Mr. Eze’s house.
The unfortunate incident, he asserted, happened in Nise and not in Nibo, as
some people had been speculating. According to him, Mr. Eze's wife does petty
trading at Eke Nibo Market. "The incident happened inside his C-Class
Mercedes Benz car, which had been parked for years. The wife was at Eke Nibo
Market doing her business when it happened.
‘’Normally, his wife takes the
children with her to the market, but that Saturday, she left the children with
her husband, Mr. Eze, since he was at home." Continuing, he said,
"Mr. Eze claimed he went to buy some stuff when it happened, and on getting
back to the house, he couldn’t find his children. He asked some people if they
saw or knew his children's whereabouts. He raised an alarm. It was then the
Vigilante were called in, and that was how we got to know about it."
On his part, the Head of Nise
Vigilante Group, Mr. Ndubuisi, declared that he had never experienced what
happened in Nise town that Saturday evening in his life. "I was in my
office around 5:35 pm when my unit commander from that area called me; it was a
distress call. I left for the place with some of my men. On getting to Mr.
Eze's house, a crowd had gathered there. I went in and saw the lifeless bodies
of those three children on the veranda. Two boys and the last child, a
girl."
He pointed out that he asked
the children’s father, Mr. Eze, to explain what happened. Mr. Ndubuisi noted
that Mr. Eze responded that his wife left home that morning, leaving the
children with him. Mr. Eze maintained that after serving his children
breakfast, he locked the gate with the children inside while leaving the house.
"I don't know if he does
that when leaving the house, since there was nobody to look after the children
because I found out that they had no house help. When he got back to the house,
there was no trace of the children. He discovered that the doors to their rooms
were open. At that point, he highlighted that Mr. Eze reportedly started
calling them out, but there was no response. He then ran outside looking for
them, and nobody said they saw his children. He went back to the house and went
around the house; he saw his children inside his car. He opened the car and saw
their lifeless bodies."
Mr. Ndubuisi said he asked him
if there was anybody he suspected, and Mr. Eze answered nobody.
"Immediately, I called the Divisional Police Officer of Awka South Local
Government Area and briefed him on what had happened. When the DPO and his team
arrived, they discovered no sign that the children were strangled, nor any sign
of physical assault, stabbing, or gunshot. There was no physical evidence of
harm to the children. There was no bloodstain in the car, nor anywhere in the
building or around it. Rather, we only saw the feces and urine the children
passed in the car, perhaps when gasping for air. The DPO said from their
findings that the children died of suffocation," said Mr. Ndubuisi.
Mr. Ndubuisi suggested that
perhaps the children may have found their way inside the car to play, couldn’t
find their way out by opening the car doors, and maybe struggled to get out
while gasping for air, and suffocated.
He noted that the police
findings were different from the information carried by social media.
"Some people even speculated that it was a gun attack, while others said
it was the handiwork of assassins. The truth is that there was an incident. We
lost lives; three children. They (social media) didn’t report the incident
accurately."
"Like what happened to me
this afternoon when I slept off inside a vehicle, from my experience, it could
be that the children slept off inside that car and suffocated in the process.
When the Police asked Mr. Eze to go and deposit his children's corpses in the
mortuary, he told them that he couldn’t afford it."
Mr. Ndubuisi said Mr. Eze
explained his decision by stating that his wife had taken years after marriage
to conceive and bear children. He added that he didn’t want to worsen the pain
of the incident by placing the children in a mortuary and requested to bury
them immediately to lessen the trauma
Mr. Ndubusi advised parents not
to leave their children unmonitored, because kids cannot monitor themselves,
maintaining that the incident would have been averted if an adult was in the
house. He prayed that such never happened to anyone.
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