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Did he kill himself?

By Charles Ogugbuaja, Owerri
18 February 2015   |   3:35 pm
• Coroner’s Inquest to deliver verdict over death of Imo-based lawyer on February 27, 2015 ON October 15, Apollos Nduka Anyile, a 50-year-old lawyer, bubbling with good health, had thought that the future was bright and would be even brighter for him.    He was then the General Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA),…

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• Coroner’s Inquest to deliver verdict over death of Imo-based lawyer on February 27, 2015

ON October 15, Apollos Nduka Anyile, a 50-year-old lawyer, bubbling with good health, had thought that the future was bright and would be even brighter for him.

   He was then the General Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Orlu, Imo State branch, a position he was reported to have handled with the dexterity and industry of a lawyer. He also lived in his sleepy village in Umuebile, Opkoro, Orlu.

   Sadly, his mother, Eucharia, beautiful wife, Syvania and little children, are today without a son, husband and father respectively.

   It was a gloom day for the family on October 15, 2014, when a loud gunshot was heard inside the bedroom of the legal practitioner in his ancestral home. Family members appeared not to have taken it seriously because every night between 8pm and 9pm, before Anyile would retire to bed, he normally released some bullets.

   In this case, the matter was only taken seriously by Anyile’s mother, Eucharia, elder brother of the deceased, Nathan Anyile, a relation, Dike, the younger brother, Nathan, and other members of the family when they could not find their son who used to wake up before 8am on October 16, to go to work and pursue his legal and other business activities for the day.

   His lifeless body was later found on the floor of his room when family members moved in to find out the cause of his disappearance.

   Immediately, the attention of the police was drawn to the scene and police officers, led by the Divisional Crime Officer (DCO) and the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), alongside a chief in the area, Benneth Amaechi, quickly went into the room, opened it carefully from the inside, only to find the corpse of the legal practitioner in his own pool of blood.

   After the initial observations made by the officers, the body was taken to St. Damian Hospital morgue, in Opkoro, Orlu, for preservation pending the autopsy and other investigations would have been concluded.

   Not satisfied by the circumstances surrounding the death of the deceased, the Imo State governor, Chief Rochas Okorocha, appointed the Secretary of the NBA in Orlu, Chuzzy Attama, to head the Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Anyile.

   After hearing all the witnesses and receiving evidences, the Coroner’s Inquest fixed Friday, February 27, for verdict on the matter.

   The Coroner of the Inquest Number CC/INQUEST/1/14, Mr. Chuzzy Attama, who disclosed this on Monday, February 16, said he took into cognizance the hearing and receipt of all the evidences and witnesses from relevant quarters, and he would deliver the verdict, which would guide in the next line of action on what would be of the corpse of the deceased.

   The Coroner, counsel to the parties (deceased family and state), the Chairman of Orlu branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Chief Celestine Okechukwu Anyiam, and Mrs. Fustina N. Ojinika, journalists and family members of the deceased, had inspected the corpse at the morgue  particularly the gunshot hole.

   The family members had contacted the police, who later arrived and opened the door to recover a double barrel gun, a letter of threat to life written by the deceased and addressed to the State Security service (SSS). 

   Attama, who reacted to the non-appearance of the Divisional Crime Officer (DCO) of Orlu, Imo State, Mrs. Emilia Emerini, to testify, after issuing an order to the Imo State Commissioner of Police to apprehend the DCO and bring her to the Magistrate’s Court, Orlu on February 9 and February 16 respectively without success, expressed disappointment on the part of the police authorities to the disobedience of court orders.

   Ruling on the police officer’s alleged disobedience, the Coroner said: “There is no explanation again for the non-production of the said DCO by the Commissioner of Police (COP), Imo State. It is the statutory duty of the police, including the COP as well as the DCO ordered to be produced to carry out court orders and if these authorities in the police force, flout the very order they are statutorily mandated to carry out, then Nigeria, as a nation is in trouble. 

   “It is really shameful but a court is a court and cannot be the police as well. The court has done its own duty and it is left for the police to do its own duty and where they fail, the record will stand there for posterity. 

   “This proceedings cannot be stalled or continue indefinitely as a result of failure of the authorities, that is the police, to perform its duty. Hence, the court will continue with the proceedings today, which will include taking additional evidence of the recalled IPO and viewing the corpse of the deceased.”

   The counsel had interrogated the IPO, Inspector Ismael Arikibe, on the issues of what they discovered at the scene of the incident.

   Arikibe, who also demonstrated the possibility of the deceased allegedly committing suicide, using the gun to show it, said the position of the pellets and the hole in the neck from the left to the right, indicated that the deceased might have killed himself.

   Arikibe said the letter of threat and mobile phone messages by the deceased as recovered, showed that the deceased wrote the SSS, alerting that some faceless persons had been threatening him at his residence in Mgbidi, to make his life uncomfortable.

   After some arguments between Ojinika and Anyiam, the letter’s two photographs were accepted as exhibits.

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