‘He drank concoction to revamp business’

How Aba-based businessman died in Enugu

THE Police in Enugu last Thursday narrated how an Aba, Abia State-based businessman, Sunday Onuorah Onwe, met his untimely death in Enugu.

It said the Amurri, Nkanu West Local Council, Enugu State-born businessman died after he was made to swallow concoction allegedly prepared for him by a native doctor in the guise of boosting his dwindling business.

A statement from the Enugu State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Ebere Amaraizu, said that the deceased businessman had left Aba on June 22 to Enugu for an appointment with the native doctor, Victor Agyula from Makurdi, Benue State.

He said from investigation that “Sunday Onuorah Onwe (now deceased) met his untimely death through the activities of those he contacted as native doctor to perform some business rituals with a view to revamping his business fortune, which according to him, was dwindling.”

Amaraizu disclosed that revelations made by the deceased on his hospital bed to the operatives of the Homicide Section of the state intelligence and Investigation Department of the Police revealed that he (Onwe) left Aba “to meet with one Afam Ejima Nweke from Ozalla in Nkanu West Local Council of Enugu State, who was already waiting with the native doctor to perform the necessary rituals as they all agreed, to enable his business in Aba stabilize.”

“It was further gathered that the deceased met with Afam Ejima and the native doctor at a certain hotel located at Gariki Awkunanaw in Enugu
State where he booked for hotel accommodation for the native doctor.

Consequently, in the early hours of the next day, all of them including the deceased moved to a bush at Ozalla in Nkanu West Local Council along Enugu- Port Harcourt Expressway for the rituals.

There, the deceased was made to drink a concoction suspected to have been prepared with distilled water (acid) and thereafter, stripped naked while the remaining liquid was poured on him.

“He later became unconscious and fell down at about 4.00a.m. The native doctor, Afam Ejima and other cohorts believing he had died, made away with his Toyota Avalon car, his handsets and the sum of N430,000, which he brought from Aba out of the sales he made the previous day before setting out for the rituals”.

Amaraizu stated that Onwe was later rescued by a good Nigerian who ran into him and later rushed him to University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) with the burns the acid had inflicted on it.

He was later referred to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Enugu from where he gave up the ghost.

The PPRO disclosed that the Police trailed the whereabouts of the suspects and last month, arrested Afam Nweke, adding that he had been remanded in prison custody by the order of the court.

He said that the native doctor, Victor Agyula from Benue State, had just been arrested and is now helping the police in their investigation,adding that he would be made to face the law in the end.