MY LIFE IS RUINED, CRIES WOMAN WHOSE HUSBAND WAS MURDERED AT MTN BASE STATION
For the Onwusus of Ohuhu, Ikeala Nsulu in Isiala Ngwa North Local Government of Abia State, Thursday, September 16, 2010 was like any other day.
Their bread winner, Mr Martin Onwusu employed six months ago by GSM service provider, MTN, to man one of its base stations in Aba, Abia State as a security man, had enthusiastically prepared for work as always. There was no premonition that something unusual would happen. Onwusu went to work that fateful, but he never returned alive.
Onwusu was manning the MTN base station at Alaoji along the Enugu/Port Harcourt express way on that fateful day when at about 2.00 p.m. a van belonging to the service provider pulled by, carrying three mobile policemen, two MTN engineers and another worker who came for routine maintenance at the station.
Hardly had the van carrying the policemen and the MTN staffers stopped than gunmen believed to be kidnappers emerged from nowhere, perhaps on a kidnap mission, but on sighting the police they opened fire.
At the end of about 10 minutes of non-stop firing, the policemen, two MTN engineers and Mr. Onwusu, the 75-year-old security man lay stone dead. Yet the gunmen were not done as they kidnapped the two others who reports said were only released after the payment of N10 million ransoms.
Three months after her husband's brutal murder by the gunmen, Alice the widow who the responsibility of taking care of their seven children has now rested squarely on her shoulders told Daily Sun that those who killed her husband might as well kill her for they have made life unbearable .
'My husband was working for a private company in Aba and retired in 1991. Since then, he was without job until in March, 2010 when MTN offered him job as a security man to be in charge of their base station at Alaoji.
'With this job, the family heaved a sigh of relief because he had an enhanced package which he was using to take care and train all our seven children aged between two and 25 years.
'Now that they've killed him (her husband), what am I going to do? I am a house wife who depended wholly on my husband for the upkeep of the family,' she said. The woman was at loss on what next to do as she asked rhetorically said, 'Look at me, what will I do as they've gruesomely murdered my husband, who is going to take care of the children and other members of the family he left behind?
'Four of my children are in primary and secondary schools, who will train them, who will pay their school fees now that their father is no more. What offence did I commit that made the kidnappers to punish me and the family?'
What pained Mrs Onwuzu the more was the fact her husband did not speak to her before he died.
'Nobody expected him to die the way he did. What remained very painful was that he did not speak to any member of the family before he died. In Igbo land when a man is about to die he will summon his household, particularly the wife and grown up children and perhaps other relations to say his last words and probably reveal certain things; none of these we heard from my husband. He never spoke to any member of the family before he died'.
Mrs Onwusu was not alone in her lamentation. Their first child, Obioma (20) who is an attendant in one of the filling stations in Aba appeared to be the more hit by his father's brutal murder.
'I am confused, I don't know what next to do,' he said as he spoke with Daily Sun.
He said it would be difficult for him to fit into his father's shoes; carry on the family responsible the way the elder Onwusu stoically did.
His word: 'It will be very difficult for me to fit into my father's shoes. I cannot at my age be able to do what my father was doing in the family before they killed him.'
The young Onwusu narrated how a week to the gruesome murder of his father, the elder Onwusu came to his house to inform him that the MTN job has turned his life around financially and asked him to take JAMB Exam to enable him gain admission into the university next year, saying that the sweet promise of his father has been dimmed by heartless gunmen.
But there is one thing mother and son would like to be done for them to assuage their bread winner's loss: 'We want Abia State government to help the family financially' and MTN, aside rendering financial assistance, the family wants the GSM service provider to employ Obioma in order for him to take care of his siblings.