‘Go back to your parents, remarry, while myself, children go back to our creator’ – Suicide note

ONE week after Edwin Nnadiogo, a 48-year old tenant of No.19B Ntueke Street, Awada layout, Obosi in Idemili North Local government Area of Anambra state, near Onitsha killed his four children, sister in-law and himself, his fellow tenants were yet to recover from the rude shock, fear and psychological trauma which gripped them as a result of the incident.. A visit to the compound last Wednesday showed that the entire house was almost deserted by the tenants, including the one sharing the same flat with him. Some of the tenants abandoned the compound for fear of the unknown, while others sneak in at intervals and hurry out. The action of the tenants, according to their chairman, Chief Osualor Ibeabuchi J, was not only based on the frequent visits of policemen and other security agencies to the compound, or because of the abnormal nature of the act, but also because the odour of the congealed blood of the slain children was still oozing out from the 4th floor where Nnadiogo lived and killed his children and himself. Speaking inside the compound, Ibeabuchi J noted that almost all the children residing inside the compound are now suffering from one type of sickness or the other following the terrible sight of corpses of the slain children who were playing with them when Nnadiogo, their father, returned home and they all shouted Daddy, Daddy, welcome in jubilation and followed him upstairs. Ibeabuchi J said that as chairman of the yard, he did not know much about the late Nnadiogo who hailed from Isu Njaba in Njaba Local Government Area of Imo state because during his life time, he refused to attend meetings of the tenants because he saw himself as the landlord, since he was a direct younger brother to the landlord. He recalled that Nnadiogo’s wife, a nurse by profession and proprietor of a chemist shop near the compound whom he simply identified as Mama Mmesoma, had packed into the building early last year without the husband, while the husband joined her in the apartment between November and December, last year. Giving a graphic account of how the tenants knew about the killings, Ibeabuchi J recalled that it was very difficult for himself residing on the ground floor of the building to have known what was happening at the 4th floor because even the tenant who was sharing the floor with Nnadiogo was not in the house on the fateful day. He said the tenant who shared the floor with Nnadiogo is from Enugu state and he had a ghastly motor accident about seven months ago which shattered one of his legs and landed him at University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, UNTH, Enugu and was just discharged from the hospital recently. He said he was taking his bath between 6.35 and 7.35 p.m. on the fateful Saturday when he heard the shouting from the 3rd floor of the building and when he rushed out to find out who was shouting and why, he saw a teenage girl who had visited the slain sister in-law to Nnadiogo at the window.He said the teenage girl jumped from the window of the 4th floor where the incident took place and landed at the 3rd floor when she saw Nnadiogo butchering his children with knife and warned her to steer clear.. He said luckily enough, the tenant living at the 3rd floor returned from maternity where he had gone to see his wife who was delivered of a baby and he opened the door before they reached the teenage girl shouting and asked her what it was all about and then she disclosed that something terrible had just happened at the 4th floor. He said as they all went upstairs to the 4th floor and knocked, there was no response as the door was locked from inside but they perceived an ugly incidence because the teenage girl informed them that she saw Nnadiogo using knife on his children before she escaped through the window from the 4th floor and jumped into the 3rd floor and discovered that she could not climb down from there because the doors were under lock and key since the tenant of the 3rd floor was not in and then she started shouting: “help me, someone help me”. According to him, “I was taking my bath that evening and when I started hearing the shouting, I quickly abandoned my bath half way, tied my wrapper around my waist and rushed out with the foam of soap all over my body. I joined the tenant on the 3rd floor who just returned from the maternity and when he opened his door, the teenage girl narrated her horrendous story to us and we quickly rushed to the police.. “After the police at Awada police station took our statements, they followed us back home and forced the 4th floor open and behold, I saw Nnadiogo’s last born lying dead on the floor and knife wounds all over his body and I was so terrified that I refused to follow the policemen into the bedroom where they found the four others also lying dead, with Nnadiogo himself unconscious, but he died on the way to the hospital and all of them were deposited at Bex Memorial Hospital Mortuary, Awada.”. He disclosed that while their lifeless bodies were being evacuated from the flat, Nnadiogo’s elder and younger brothers, who are all brothers to the landlord of the house, picked up his international passport and saw a hand written note folded inside it and when he was reading the note, one of the policemen snatched it from him and read it to the hearing of everybody. He stated that he heard the policeman reading the content of the note written by Nnadiogo himself before the killings as follows: “I and my children will go back to the creator of the world, while my wife will go back to her parents and remarry someone who she feels is better than me”. He quoted Nnadiogo’s wife as telling the police that her late husband was frequently using abusive words on her, adding that he had been going to rehabilitation and psychiatric homes to control his mental disorderliness and that her parents came to Awada on Sunday, a day after the incident and took her to Isu Njaba. “The teenage girl told all of us that she had come to pay a visit to her friend, the slain sister in-law, but came face to face with the horrendous development. Also, a house help to Nnadiogo, whom he sent out to buy a sachet of cold water for him, returned with the water and found everybody dead,”.he said. He said both the landlord of the house, who is eldest brother to the deceased and the caretaker of the house who is the elder brother to the deceased, came into the police station, made statements and left. He said it was the shout of the teenage girl that saved the whole tenants from walking into trouble because if she had not visited and saw part of the killing, the tenants would not have known what happened until their bodies would have started decomposing and it would have sent all the tenants into perpetual trouble. The state Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Mrs. Nkiru Nwode, ASP, told newsmen on phone that the police are still waiting for the report of the autopsy.]]>