A trader in Anambra State, Mrs Ngozi Okonkwo, tells Pecohub about her struggle for justice for her grandchild who was kidnapped and his school uniform dumped at a shrine
My name is Ngozi Okonkwo. I am an indigene of Umunnama community in Eziowelle, Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State. I am 55 years old. I am a petty trader and I am married with kids and a grandchild.
My grandson, Tukwasichukwuobi Okonkwo, has been missing since 2019. He was taken away alongside his classmate, Chinenye, by abductors on January 19, 2019. It was while they were waiting for their teachers and other pupils to come and conduct the morning assembly in the school compound at Uzubi Nursery and Primary School that their captors came and took them away and till date, they have not been found.
It was my daughter, Amara, who used to drop them off at their school before she would proceed to her own school. She was in secondary school also located along the same road. What happened was on the morning she dropped the children, the teachers had yet to come to school, so the children were left alone in the compound and that was what gave the captors the chance to lure the children away.
There was no security guard at the school. It was an open compound; no fence and no gate.
He was seven years old in 2019, by now he ought to be 10.
The mother had him when she was living with me. And when she got married, she did not take the child along.
I waited for him to return from school after school hours on that fateful day as other kids were coming back home, but he did not return. While I was getting ready to go to the school to check up on him at about 3pm, a teacher from the school walked into my house and told me that my attention was needed in the school. On getting to the school, the teachers told me that someone brought the school uniforms and bags of the missing kids to the school and told them that he picked the items from a shrine known as ‘Ogwugwu’ in Eziowelle. When I searched my grandson’s bag, I found some packets of biscuits inside, even when I did not buy any biscuits for him when he was leaving for school in the morning.
The school authorities told me that they did not even know that the two missing kids came to school that day because they (school authorities) had not reached the school before the kids were lured away by the suspects.
A lot of things are being suspected, especially as they said their school uniforms were found in a shrine, but I want to remain positive so long as it has not being stated in that direction. Other thoughts like the possibility of the children being sold also flash through my mind, but it is better that the children were sold and are still alive than being ritually killed or whatever, although, no parents pray for either of these.