Port Harcourt, Rivers State by three men believed to be ritualists.
travelled from Abakaliki, Ebonyi State to the Garden City to visit her
elder sister, Dr Mrs Ugochi Igwe, in April 2015.
Based on
information pieced together by her father, Pa Kalu, Sunday Sun gathered
that after the young lady alighted from the bus somewhere along the
East-West road, Eleme, Port Harcourt, she called her father and informed
him that she had arrived the city and was about to take a taxi to her
sister’s place. Oluchi flagged down a taxi, told the driver her
destination and boarded. Three other
men were also in the taxi.
They had just driven some distance when she noticed that something was
wrong. The strange attitude of the three occupants of the taxi made her
uncomfortable and she sensed danger. Her fear became real when the taxi
suddenly veered off her route and headed to direction she did not know.
Then it dawned on her that there was trouble. She quickly put a call
across to her father, informing him of the situation.
As Pa Kalu told Sunday Sun, the frightened young lady said:
“Daddy, I don’t know where the taxi I entered is taking me to.”
She
pleaded with the people to let her go and even passed her phone to them
to listen to her father’s pleas to them to spare her, promising to pay
ransom. He even invoked the name of the Most High in the hope that
abductors had a modicum of reverence for God, but all his pleas fell on
deaf ears.
The abductors were said to have told Pa Kalu that
giving them money could not solve the problem and brusquely returned the
phone to Oluchi, who continued to plead for her life as her father
listened on the open line.
After a short while the phone went
dead, and that was the last time Pa Okore heard the voice of his lovely
daughter. Hours rolled into days and then weeks, yet no call came from
her or the abductors. The family organized a search and also reported
the matter to the police, the State Security Service (SSS) and the
Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), in Port Harcourt.
What ensued from that day was pure mental torture for the Okore family
as they daily searched everywhere. As the weeks passed and the abductors
made no contact with the family, it began to dawn on Pa Okore that
Oluchi’s disappearance was not a case of kidnapping for ransom. That
suspicion became real when her mutilated body was eventually discovered
where the ritual killers dumped it.
The grief-stricken father lamented:
“It
is only God who knows what my daughter saw in their hands before they
killed her in cold blood and harvested her vital organs for rituals,” Pa
Okore lamented.
Before the discovery of the victims
remains, the combined team of the SSS and DMI working on the belief that
the victim could probably had been abducted by ritualists given that
they did not contact the family, obtained and reviewed the central call
log of MTN GSM network.
Through the review, the investigating
team found out the location of Oluchi’s last call. The effort paid off
as three of the ritualists were arrested in a hotel, where they were
enjoying the N1.5 million their clients paid for the body parts they
procured for them. The culprits then led security operatives to where
they dumped what remained of Oluchi’s body after cutting out vital
organs.
Oluchi was buried on Thursday, May 7th, 2015, in
Eziobasi, Amodu Ututu, in Arochukwu LGA of Abia State, after a funeral
service held at the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria, Umule Parish, Aba.
At the burial of the murdered young lady, Pa Okore wailed
uncontrollably at her graveside. Oluchi was the daughter that always put
smiles on his face each time she was around. Expectedly, the painful
loss of their daughter made them look very frail, emaciated and deeply
troubled.
In their remarks, they both wished that those who
murdered Oluchi had asked for money. That even if they could not afford
the ransom, they could have borrowed at any cost to save their
treasured jewel, who Okore described as a unique daughter.
He
recalled how he had laboured for 24 years and Oluchi from nursery,
primary, secondary school and then to Abia State University, where the
beautiful lady bagged a Bachelor of Science degree in Banking and
Finance, before going for the national youth service in 2013 and served
as an accountant with Kenol Investments, a private firm. She later
served as the sales manager of the company.
After completing
the youth service, Oluchi took up appointment at Unity FM based in
Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, where she worked as the accountant until she
fell into the hands of ritual killers during the ill-fated trip to Port
Harcourt.
In his tribute to Oluchi, Pa Okore amid sobs said of his daughter:
“You
showed genuine love to those that came your way, you spent all you had
to make us happy. You were unique by all standards. You labored and had
no opportunity to reap the fruits of your labour. The Almighty God knows
what to do with those who murdered you and their sponsors. No one of
them will be left unpunished.”
Oluchi’s mother in her own tribute said:
“You
were always in a hurry to put things in order whenever you were with us
at home. You made every corner of our house take a new look; you cared
for your parents and siblings alike. Only God knows why he allowed you
to be murdered at a tender age. Go in peace, Oluchi my daughter.”