Edeh, along with two others, in an auto crash
have some unseen hands behind it or was it
just destiny at work. That is the question
begging for answer several days after the
accident.
The crash happened along the busy Abakaliki –
Uge while the couple were on their way to
Abakaliki, Ebonyi State capital, to express
their gratitude to friends and family members
who graced their wedding in Calabar, Cross
River State capital, the previous week.
What is raising the poser is the drama that
involved the couple shortly before the
accident that claimed their lives.
Frank and Ann, as they were fondly called,
were said to be from Ebonyi State but resident
in Calabar, where Frank had chosen to stay to
carry out his electronics business.
According to sources, the duo left Calabar on
the afternoon of Saturday, 7 September,
heading to Abakaliki but, on getting to Amudo,
some thirty kilometres to Abakaliki, their
vehicle, a Toyota Camry, developed an
electrical fault which prompted Frank to go in
search of an auto electrician. He took Okada
to the electrician shop, about half a
kilometre from the spot where the car had the
fault. "The man came to my shop at about 4 pm
and said his car had stopped and that he had
tried to start it without success. He
suspected an electrical fault. So, I went with
him on the Okada", Omaka, the electrician told
Sunday Vanguard.
*File photo
After spirited effort by Omaka to get the car
to start failed, he informed Frank that his
former boss, Luke, might help but that he was
operating at Onueke, some three kilometres
away from Amudo. Frank asked the electrician
to get Luke on phone which he did, asking Luke
to come on Okada so that he would get to the
place fast.
When Luke came, he asked Frank to pay the
Okada man the fare, N200, but Ann objected,
arguing that the man ought to repair the car
before her husband would pay and this led to
an argument.
"Luke took a motorcycle from Onueke to Amudo.
When he got there, he told the man to pay the
Okada man but his wife started shouting that
why should her husband pay the transport fare
when he had not even touched the car", Omaka
narrated.
"Luke still wanted to repair the car but when
he opened the bonnet, I think he saw something
which made him to change his mind and he told
the man that he should allow the repair to
wait until Monday and that even if he went on
to repair the car, it still would not start".
This statement by Luke got Ann more angry,
causing Luke to leave the place and since
there was nothing else the couple could do as
nightfall was rapidly approaching, they had to
leave for Abakaliki in a commercial vehicle.
The next day, Frank and Ann sought the service
of another electrician at Abakaliki whose name
was given as Ortuh. They asked the
electrician to go with them to Amudo to fix
the car. "They refused to heed the advice of
Luke that they should allow the repair of the
car to wait till Monday. So, the next day,
which was Sunday, they did not go to church
but rather decided to come back with Ortuh
from Abakalilki to Amudo in a chartered
vehicle. On their way, the car suffered burst
tyre and collided with a tanker. All the four
people in the car, including the couple, were
killed in the accident". Omaka said
When Sunday Vanguard visited Luke at Onueke
Motor Park where his auto electrical shop is
located, he said Ann was unnecessarily
quarrelsome. "I told them that if not for my
boy who called me on phone that I should come
and help a man and his wife who just got
married because their car had refused to
start, I do not usually go on outside work,
but when I got there, I saw something and told
them not to repair that car till Monday
because my spirit told me that something was
wrong. The woman was angry and thought I
wanted to punish them".
Though, the electrician would not disclose
what he .saw, he queried why Frank should take
his wife the next day to where their faulty
car was. "Why did the man take his wife the
next day to Amudo to repair the car? Couldn't
she have stayed in Abakaliki while he alone
with Ortuh go to repair the car?"
He said the fate of the two had been bound
together by unseen forces, otherwise they
would have attended service that Sunday and
prayed to God and then, on Monday, Frank would
have gone to Amudo to fix the car, and tragedy
would have been averted.
A taxi driver at Abomege Motor Park in
Abakaliki, Ogbada told Sunday Vanguard that
the driver whose car the couple chartered
that Sunday morning used to be a tipper driver
but recently bought the ill-fated Audi car,
with which he plied the Abakaliki – Amudo-
Abomege road, from the money he got from
driving the tipper.
"I was the one the man (Frank) contacted first
but I did not want to go; so I gave it to the
former tipper driver. The man (driver)
appeared drunk that morning and so he
collected N1,500 from the man even when we
asked him to collect the complete sum for five
passengers which is N1,800 since the
transport fare from Abakaliki to Amudo is 300
Naira and his car carried five persons".
He said nemesis may have caught up with the
former tipper driver because he was not
remitting the money he was scheduled to pay
the owner of the tipper and was accumulating
money to buy his own vehicle, "We were not
happy with him because he collected N1,500
from the people (couple) and did not pay us
commission (chop money) as the money was not
enough for him to give to us and also buy fuel
and now see where he ended".
At press time, the tanker was still parked at
the Onueke Police Station while the bodies of
Ortuh, the electrician, and the driver had
been taken to their villages for burial while
those of the couple were in the mortuary of
the Onueke General Hospital
Source-vanguard
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