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Petty trader commits suicide in Anambra State

By Editor
30 March 2017   |   4:29 am
A thirty-eight-year-old petty trader, Mrs. Lovina Odo, has committed suicide by hanging herself with a rope tied to a ceiling fan at Umusiome village, Nkpor-agu near Onitsha in Anambra State. The incident occurred on Tuesday around 5:00p.m.

• Cleric blames bad economy for increasing incidents

A thirty-eight-year-old petty trader, Mrs. Lovina Odo, has committed suicide by hanging herself with a rope tied to a ceiling fan at Umusiome village, Nkpor-agu near Onitsha in Anambra State. The incident occurred on Tuesday around 5:00p.m.

Mr. Okechukwu Odo, husband of the deceased, said he and Lovina had been married for over eight years without a child. Odo, a car washer, said he returned home from work around 6:30p.m. and met sympathisers around his one-room apartment.

“I left home for work that morning after taking my breakfast; she had asked that I buy a tuber of yam for dinner while coming home. When I returned, I saw people gathered around my apartment only to be told that my wife had committed suicide,” he said.

Odo stressed that he and the deceased had no misunderstanding that could have led her to commit suicide. The Divisional Police Officer of Ogidi, CSP Hassan Musa, confirmed the story and said the corpse of Lovina had been removed and deposited at the Mortuary of Iyienu Mission Hospital.

“No suicide note was seen around her but preliminary investigation reveals that she might have committed suicide because she had no child,” Musa said.

Meanwhile, a Lagos cleric, Prophet Lai Bamidele, at the weekend urged President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently raise a think-tank of credible economic experts, to help lead the country out of its present socio-economic crisis.

Bamidele, who spoke during his 60th birthday, said rising cases of suicide were clear indications that all was not well with the Nigerian economy. Recalling how some persons had attempted suicide in Lagos last week, owing to inability to pay up debts or as a result of excruciating hunger, the cleric said such situations spoke volumes “that this administration’s economic programmes are failing.

“Much as we know that anything that will be put right must come with some pains, this kind of pain is too deadly for contemplation. It is more painful because the Buhari administration was elected for four years and it is almost reaching two years without something tangible to point at.

“That people are now committing suicide owing to hunger, joblessness and social neglect is an indictment on whatever economic policy that might have put in place, and it is now time for the Buhari administration to re-strategise by forming a committee of credible economic experts, who will help lead th e country out of these doldrums,” he said. Bamidele, who said churches in the country have been praying for the president’s wellbeing and quick recovery, advised him “to free himself from members of the cabal in power, so as to deliver the dividends of democracy.”

The cleric, recalled his travails in the service of God, saying it was only perseverance that had kept him in the vineyard.

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