A woman whose 20-year-old daughter, Charity Eze, was allegedly raped and murdered at Imufu, Igbo-Eze North Council in Enugu State has cried out for justice.
Mrs. Juliet Eze said she has not been sleeping well since her daughter’s death in March 2019.Charity, who was living with her parents in Abuja, was said to have relocated to Imufu to prepare for last year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME). The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board conducts the exam.
She was allegedly abducted by unknown men from the centre where she was taking lessons on March 26, moved into the bush and raped to death.
The community discovered her half-naked body the following day.Mrs. Eze claimed three persons were arrested in connection with the incident but were released by the police without the family’s knowledge.
“I want the suspects to be re-arrested and killed just as they killed my daughter. I want the government to follow up this case and secure justice for my dead child,” she said.
“I thought their release from police custody was a rumour until I met one of the suspects the day I was going to the market to buy foodstuffs. That day, my heart was broken. They threatened that we cannot do anything to them.
“The police did shoddy investigations, maybe because we could not afford to pay them owing to our poor financial standing.”Mrs. Eze added: “I was selling ‘okpa’ in Abuja before this incident happened. Since then I have been in the village. Feeding is even a problem for my family now because my husband is poor. We have been working hard to feed our children and give them the best possible education we can afford, and I had hoped on Ngozi because she worked hard and had told me she wanted to study nursing in the university.
“I have not been sleeping since my daughter’s life was snuffed out in her prime. Sometimes i wake up and cry in the middle of the night.”
Another member of the family, Comrade Emeka Mamah, alleged that the police named a suspect who the victim turned down his marriage proposals.
“We cooperated with the police by providing information and other assistance, but as we are talking, no policeman has visited the scene of the incident. It is a year and five months now and justice has not been served. The police were only interested in money.”
During a requiem mass for the deceased, the Parish Priest of St. Joseph’s Catholic Parish, Imufu, Rev. Fr. Rufus Achinike, condemned the police for their inability to arrest Charity’s killers.
Ayoola said legislators should begin to take issues concerning domestic violence seriously.A Trustee of YMCA, Otunba Oyinlade Adedeji, lamented indiscipline in the country.
He said: “We have sufficient laws that are effective but we need to implement them. The legislation has taken adequate care of domestic violence, but implementation is the problem. So we need to ensure that domestic violence issues are looked into.”
The General Secretary, YMCA Lagos, Adeniyi Akindayomi, said the association discovered that domestic violence was a major issue in the country.
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