Mrs. Celestina Uzomaka Onwuebuta, a civil servant and wife of Inspector Clement Onwuebuta, a policeman attached to the Uwani Police Station Enugu, who was recently killed by his fellow policemen while on patrol, is insisting that her husband’s death was a premeditated murder.
The deceased, who was in service for 31 years, had served as a mobile policeman under MOPOL 65, Enugu before being moved two years ago to Uwani station.
He hails from Akwukabi in Echie Local Government Area of Rivers State and was reportedly awaiting his promotion by April before his life was cut short by his colleagues who were said to be on patrol on Friday, February 17 in Enugu.
His widow told our reporter that her husband was planning to relocate to his state. “But now they have killed him and put him in the mortuary.”
Said she: “I want to use this medium to cry out to the public because I am afraid for my own life and that of my son. I am calling on the Inspector-General of Police and the public to come to my aid because we no longer feel safe. We are afraid that the same people who killed my husband may also be after our own lives because they don’t seem to care.”
Celestina narrated how her husband, on Friday, February 17, left the house at about 6:30am for work. At about 6: pm she had to call to find out what he would eat when he returned. “He told me to prepare garri for him, that he would be coming back around 9 pm because their DPO said they would be going on patrol.
“I called him again at about 8 pm, and he confirmed that he would be through by 9 pm. At exactly 9.30pm, our only son called his father, but his line was not going through. He said mummy, daddy’s line is not going through. He said he wanted to tell his father to buy suya on his way home. I told him not to worry, that maybe his father was driving. By 10 pm, I decided to call him myself, yet the phone was not going through, and we were getting worried. Even our son refused to eat, insisting he would wait for his daddy.
“I was still lying on the sofa when I suddenly woke up at about 2 am. I first went to my phone but to my surprise there were no missed calls because even if he was continuing with his job he would ordinarily call to inform me. We never stayed beyond one hour without talking to each other, even when there was nothing to talk about.”
At about 5am she woke up again to discover that he wasn’t back yet. It was then it dawned on her that there could be trouble somewhere. At 5:30 am, without minding her nightgown, she headed straight to his office, Uwani Police Station.
“I met somebody at the gate and he greeted me and I told him I was looking for my husband. He told me that my husband had left, that they closed at night and he left. He said I should go back. I went back. My son was standing by the door, and he said, ‘daddy is not back o’ and I immediately turned back and returned to the Uwani police station. I met somebody again and he said that he left at night I said no, that there are three or four people working under him. I said I would like to see one of them. He called one of them who told me that the DPO said
my husband should go and replace somebody at the State headquarters.
“So I came home, took my bath and went to the State Police headquarters. I saw somebody who said Madam Chiefo, (that’s what they call him) what brought you here? I said I was looking for Chiefo, that they told me he went on incident duty. So she took me to the radio room. The man there asked me his name, I told him and he brought the inspectors list but his name wasn’t there.
“I went back to Uwani Police State; I went to the counter and saw two young girls with a man there, I said please I am looking for my husband. They said ‘madam, why are you shouting? Why are you making noise? Nothing has happened to your husband. He has gone. They closed around 9 pm. I was there crying, shouting, calling on God to come to my
rescue.
“Then one man came and said the DPO said that my husband said I should go and bring his uniform in the house. I shouted and started crying louder, insisting that my husband cannot do such a thing without talking to me. I continued shouting, crying and went to their parade
ground and lay there. At a point the DPO sent for me and said that whatever happened I should be taken to my house. That was how I returned.
“In the evening, some of my brothers came and there were people. Because the story had gone round, and they told me my husband was dead, that they went to the mortuary to confirm it. I was told that I fainted about two or three times. But for me, I didn’t know what was happening.
“It was later I learnt that he was shot dead by a team of policemen from Ogui Station. That they were four of them in an unmarked vehicle and it happened around 9.30pm because we called him by 9:00pm and he answered. So he must have taken a track road to Edinburgh Road where
he was shot.
“Some women from that area came here and asked me to come so they could show anyone in doubt where my husband fell. That they really killed that man, gave him three bullets. They said that as they shot him on the hand, he was crying. my wife o! And they shot him again and even while he fell he was given a third bullet on the neck to make sure he died.
“And when they killed him, they went back to the office and brought the patrol vehicle and carried my husband’s body to their station. The DPO was said to have shouted: ‘Why should you kill this person? It’s Clems!’ Because few days before then, my husband told me that he saw the DPO. It was my husband that encouraged him to go into the police. That happened two days before he was killed.
“My problem is that, after identifying Clems as a police officer with his identity card, phone and service pistol, there were no efforts to contact any of his relations. Rather, on their own, they took him to the mortuary. Not only that, they went back to the office and continued working. None of them from Ogui Police Station came here to say sorry, maybe they mistakenly killed
your husband.”
She argued that even if her husband was a thief, there was no need to have switched off his phone when they were supposed to use the phone for further investigations in anticipation that his gang members might try to contact him.
“But after identifying him they had the mind to take him to the mortuary without contacting his people because in his phone he has numbers of people close to him.
“There are so many questions unanswered and I don’t know where this thing started, maybe someone was monitoring him, telling his assailants that he was coming and that he wasn’t with his car.”
She recalled the last text message he sent to her promising to take her out on Saturday for the way she took care of his sister in the hospital where she had a major operation.
“I am the first wife in the family. The other ones are too small. My husband is the breadwinner of the entire family and we don’t have a house of our own. We are living in somebody’s house.
“What we do is that when we collect our salaries we join it together and send to the younger ones. One of them is a wielder who constructs iron gates. The other one is learning how to do glass doors and windows. Their only daughter he promised to give her some money to start trading by March. She left only on Saturday and this thing happened.”
In his reaction, Enugu Police Public Relations Officer, Ebere Amarizu described the incident as unfortunate, expressing regrets for the death of the Inspector.
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