There was a downpour of sorrow on Friday as the body of a 45-year-old woman, Ugochukwu Chima, allegedly killed by her husband in a domestic violence, was laid to rest in her home, Itim, in Edda Local Government Area of Ebonyi State.
The lady died on October 24, 2024 with her death linked to severe injuries inflicted on her by her husband in a violent attack.
The attack was reportedly carried out on September 4, 2024.
Late Ugochukwu and her husband, 54-year-old Chima Etta Eseni, were married for 16 years with three children before the ugly incident.
Friends and family members at the funeral described the late Ugochukwu as a loving, lively and easy-going woman with a kind heart, adding that the circumstance of her death was excruciatingly painful.
In a funeral oration, the elder brother of the deceased, Justice Iheanachor Chima, who could not hold back his tears, described her sister’s death as both nightmarish and hard to bear.
Chima lamented: “Ugo, your death is most painful because a man like me violently hit your head repeatedly against the wall, hit your waist with a heavy chair and clubbed you to death with two iron walking sticks with the disconcerting result that you sustained multiple spinal cord injuries…
“This is too much to bear.”
Speaking to journalists, another brother of hers, Sunday Omaka Chima, insisted that the family must seek justice over the death of their daughter and sister stating that such was her sister’s demand before she gave up.
Omaka stressed: “The family must seek justice.
“Our sister made a death declaration, and it is a very strong evidence to nail whoever has a hand in the circumstances of her death.
“Based on that, if we say we are no longer interested, we would be betraying her.
“For her to have said before her death that even if she dies, we should seek for justice, so shall it be.
“We must look for justice.”
In an interview, the Ebonyi State Coordinator of the Gender-based Violence Taskforce, Faithvin Nwanchor, and the State Coordinator of the National Human Rights Commission, Christopher Okorie, decried the spate of Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria and Africa in general, describing it as alarming.
Nwanchor, also the HOD, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Response in the State Ministry of Justice, called for concerted effort from all and sundries to end the ugly menace of GBV in the society, which affects all sexes.
She noted that whenever a woman or a man suffers GBV in a home, the children are also badly affected physically, mentally, and psychologically, and their psyche could be permanently damaged.
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She charged women to always speak up when in a violent relationship.
Nwanchor said: “We must be able to read the red flag.
“When it is no longer working, it is better to leave and live rather than dying.”
Okorie, on his part, described death as the highest consequence of GBV.
He said: “Death is the ultimate negative end result of GBV, and that’s why we have been fighting on the side of prevention.”
On the concern about the fate of the children of the deceased if their father is to be finally convicted and incarcerated, hee responded: “What I have to say is that it is better to be fatherless than to have a murderous and irresponsible father, if at all it is proved at the end that it was the action of the man that led to the death.”
In a funeral sermon titled: “Let not your heart be troubled,” the Mid-east Synod Moderator of the Presbyterian church of Nigeria, Right Reverend Ibiam Orji, admonished christians to always surrender their concerns to God who has answers to all human questions and confusions.
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