The sister to the deceased Eunice Tochukwu Ojukwu gave this report when she visited the Ikeja office of the Sun newspaper yesterday.
“I am the immediate junior sister of Eucharia Uche Ishiaku who was married to the man you all now know as Senator Elisha Abbo,” she declared. “His real name is Clifford Ishiaku, that’s the name we knew him till we saw the story on social media that he is now a senator.”
Without much ado, Eunice Ojukwu spilled the details.
According to her, the couple met sometime before 2009 and before they got married, he converted from Islam to Christianity. On September 26, 2009, they had their church wedding at a Catholic church in Mubi, Adamawa.
Months after, she took ill and thereafter was treating a regular ailment, not knowing that she had been infected with HIV.
“I got to know about her illness in 2012,” she said.
“On her sick bed, she told me everything that happened, especially how she got to know that she was infected with HIV.
She told me that she later discovered that her husband was already infected but held that information from her while they were dating. Unknown to her, he was going for treatment and was still sleeping with her without protection.
“It was destroying her system gradually and that made her sick.” Someone who observed the frequency of her illness had urged her to go for a general test. The Good Samaritan also paid for the test.
“This was how she found out that she was infected with HIV and that it was at a critical stage. When she confronted him with her result, instead of confessing, Senator Abbo battered my sister mercilessly.”
Ojukwu claimed the family got to know about the battering and made an effort to rescue their daughter from the toxic marriage. “We knew that he was raping our sister. He even tried to bring his friend so that both of them will sleep with my sister at the same time. She took a lot of stitches as a result of anal sex forced on her,” she said.
At a point, their father had contacted Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo in Mubi, begging them to bring back her daughter.
“The day she finally left in 2012, Senator Abbo followed her to the motor park and created a scene. He wanted to drag her back but my father pleaded with the driver to ensure that my sister boards the bus back to our village in Anambra.”
Of her sister, she said: “She was a calm person who did not want to lose her marriage, so she kept the information to herself. There were several fights and when my sister calls me, I will plead with her to leave that man but she will refuse. She believed so much in that marriage until she was very sick. There was an instance where he battered her so much in their house in Abuja and dragged her out of the house naked. Anytime that he was beating her up, neighbours tried to intervene and he’d threaten them with a gun.”
She continued: “When they were in Abuja, he would dump her in the hospital for days, and no one would be there to give her food till the hospital alerted us and we’d send someone to her. We were in and out of the hospital for six months before she died in 2013. When my sister died, he called that he was going to deal with me that I was the one that killed my sister.”
She gave an insight into how her sister met him.
“Eunice said that they started dating during her National Youth Service Corps days in Nasarawa in 2008. He had worked for so many known politicians in the north. He visited their orientation camp and they met and became friends. When our sister came up with the story of marriage, my family kicked against it.
My family was against the marriage because they were not in support of inter-tribal marriage. We do not know much about the northerner and their culture. When she died and I posted it on my Facebook wall, her friends doubted it because Senator Abbo did not say anything about it on his Facebook wall.”
Saturday Sun wanted to know why she is coming out with the story now.
Eunice Ojukwu replied: “I want justice for my sister. In 2013, when my sister died, I posted it on Facebook and no one took it seriously. He was a nobody and I was the daughter of a nobody. Then social media was not as strong as it is now. All I want is justice, let no one be deceived by those tears, he is an evil man.”
In a face-saving video circulate on social media, Abbo had apologized to Nigerians over his shameful action, cutting a figure of a remorseful man.
Ojukwu warned: “We are used to that his crocodile tears, whenever he comes begging. Nigerians should not be deceived.”
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