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Ezego family threatens to sue over Okija
shrines
•Police begin forensic probe of skeletons
MALACHY UZENDU, Abuja, and FELIX UKA, Awka
FAMILY of
businessman, the late Chief Victor Okafor (a.k.a Ezego) has threatened legal
action on persons, who alleged that his body was among those recovered by the
police from the Okija shrines in Ihiala council area of Anambra State.
Reacting to the reports (not in Daily
Champion), through their lawyer, Mr. Ikenna Obidiegwu described them as "brazen
defamatory".
Their position came as the Police High
Command will today formally commence the processes for total forensic
examination of the skulls and skeletons recovered from the shrines.
Dr. Wilson Akhiwu, a Chief Superintendent
of Police (CSP), Daily Champion learnt, is the officer in charge and has already
commenced preliminary analysis of the exhibits.
Further describing the said reports as
"orchestrated offences to the good image" of the Okafor family of Ihiala, the
family recalled that the late Ezego was a devout Christian "who never subscribed
to any form of idol worship or trial by ordeal".
According to them, at no time did the late
Chief Okafor associate himself "with the dreaded Ogwugwu Akpu shrine by way of
any transaction or submitting himself to its jurisdiction to warrant his corpse
being deposited there.
"As a matter of fact, the Ogwugwu Akpan
shrine and practices, threat offend all that Chief Okafor represented and
believed in when he was alive," the said.
Dwelling on his burial, the family
stressed that Ezego was laid to rest after a well-attended ceremony at his
Ihiala country home in full glare of prominent Nigerians.
"His body is presently resting in peace at
his graveyard in Ihiala," they said.
They regretted that "supposedly right
thinking persons" could "conjure the possibility" of Ezego’s corpse being buried
somewhere else and dismissed as "falsehood and malicious" insinuations that the
family offered money to the Ogwugwu Akpu priests for whatever reason.
Today’s planned commencement of police
analysis will, among others, determine whether some of the persons whose bodies
were recovered at the shrines died on account of ritual killing.
As at the last Friday, the police said
they had recovered 83 skeletons, 20 skulls and three dead bodies in various
stages of decomposition from the shrines.
These exhibits along with 32 of the
shrines’ priests arrested in Okija during the raid by the police, have since
been moved to Abuja.
Confirming the commencement of the
forensic analysis, Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), Mr. Sunday Ehindero
stated that "where the facilities at our disposal are inadequate for the
analysis, we will seek collaboration with the Forensic Laboratory at Oshodi in
Lagos or from the teaching hospitals.
He said the analysis would relate the
names of victims found on the registers recovered from the shrines with exhibits
in police custody.
Said he: "We will also try and find out if
the skulls and skeletons match themselves or not. We shall also ascertain why
some skeletons had skulls and some had none.
"Aside from these, the forensic
examination will help us establish the age, height, sex and other variables
pertaining to the items.
"As for the embalmed corpse which they say
belonged to one Onyekachi Iga from Enugu State, the information we will obtain
from the analysis will help us a great deal.
"Because of the puzzle we ran into, the
forensic analysis will also help us ascertain whether there is any relationship
with the theory of ritual murder we got or not."
The police boss, who noted that a
particular skull had a hole in the middle, stressed that with such analysis, the
cause of death and how the hole came about would be ascertained.
He, however, did not disclose how long it
would take to complete the analysis and the expected cost complications.
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