I can’t participate in my son’s burial again – Jim Nwobodo

The bereaved politician also maintained his initial position that he would not allow the remains of his late son to be interred in his country home in Amaechi, Awkunanaw, Enugu South Local Government Area of the state.“I am not supposed to see the corpse of my son. So to bury him in my compound where […]

The bereaved politician also maintained his initial position that he would not allow the remains of his late son to be interred in his country home in Amaechi, Awkunanaw, Enugu South Local Government Area of the state.
“I am not supposed to see the corpse of my son. So to bury him in my compound where I will wake up every day to see his grave will be a psychological torture for me,” he said while briefing journalists at his residence.
Our correspondent learnt that Chief Nwobodo had refused the request of the children of his estranged wife, Mukosolu, to bury the remains of their deceased elder brother in their father’s compound.
Sunday Trust observed that thousands of mourners who assembled at Amaechi to pay their last respect to the late Dr. Ifeanyi were thrown into confusion as aggrieved youths took over the premises in protest. They chased the guests away and maintained that the funeral would not hold. The protest continued until about 3.48 pm when Senator Ike Ekweremadu and other personalities arrived at the compound and intervened.
It was gathered that Senator Nwobodo and Mukosolu had four children: three males and a female before they separated. Later, Nwobodo married Patricia from Igbere in Abia State.
  The late Dr. Nwobodo, who passed on at a private hospital in Enugu on Sunday, November 16, 2014, was slated for burial on Friday, December 5.
Our correspondent learnt that Senator Nwobodo had built a new bungalow opposite his large compound shortly after his son’s death and directed that a grave be dug there for his burial. Villagers said the new house was built within two weeks.
However, it was said that the new development was opposed by the late Dr. Ifeanyi’s siblings and friends, who insisted that in line with Igbo tradition, the first son is the right person to inherit his father’s compound.
It was alleged that, in order to scuttle the plan to bury him in the new building, some unknown persons stormed St Martin’s Hospital Mortuary and took away Dr.  Ifeanyi’s corpse.
Having met privately with Nwobodo for about 15 minutes, Ekweremadu, Nwobodo and his wife, Pat, drove to the St. Mathew Anglican Church parsonage where they held a peace talk with the former governor’s relatives and some church leaders, including the Anglican Archbishop of Enugu Province, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Emmanuel Chukwuma.
Unfortunately, the meeting, which lasted about 50 minutes, did not bear any fruits as the participants spoke with different voices. The church leaders said they agreed to bury the corpse in the church premises to ensure peace among the feuding parties, but Ifeanyi’s siblings and friends rejected the decision, arguing that he was neither a priest nor a cannon.
Addressing journalists at his Amaechi country home last week, Senator Nwobodo, who was visibly troubled, said: “As I speak to you people now, I don’t know where the corpse of my son is. It shows the character of their mother. “I want to let the media know that I have only one wife, Patricia.  I divorced my ex-wife before I became governor in 1979. The church would not have wedded me if I had another wife,” he said as he brandished the court document that annulled the marriage.
“The children do not have my flesh and blood in them; if they had, there are certain things they would not do. My children who have my flesh and blood (children of Patricia) lavish love on me. It is unheard of that people would steal the corpse of their late brother. It is an abomination,” he added.
The former governor vowed not to have anything to do with the burial again. “As far as I am concerned I completed the burial on December 5, 2014. I will never be part of it again,’’ he declared.
Going down memory lane, he recalled that his late son was sick for months and hid it from him. He explained that it was a visitor who saw him at the point of death that raised the alarm, following which he, through the help of his wife, made arrangement for an American visa and flew him to Houston, Texas.
Senator Nwobodo said although his son was at stage four of the cancer, he was already cured at Anderson Medical Cancer Centre in Huston Texas, USA, one of the best in the world. He added that when he came back and developed pains in his legs, he was also taken to a consultant oncologist in the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu.
The ex-governor alleged that, instead of taking his son to the teaching hospital where there are facilities for emergency, the consultant referred him to his private clinic and administered him with an injection that probably caused complications and his eventual death.
He explained that as long as he is still alive, he reserved the right to decide which of his children would inherit any of his property.