Sunset at dawn for the Adetsavs

It was about midnight, precisely Friday November 2, that news of a woman killing her husband, three children and herself broke on Facebook. There were no specifics to indicate the location. At 5am, next morning, I got hint the incident was in Makurdi metropolis yet the location could not be immediately ascertained through some contacts […]

It was about midnight, precisely Friday November 2, that news of a woman killing her husband, three children and herself broke on Facebook. There were no specifics to indicate the location.

At 5am, next morning, I got hint the incident was in Makurdi metropolis yet the location could not be immediately ascertained through some contacts I had quickly reached out to.

The news spread like wild fire by Saturday morning. Most news merchants resident in the city began to call one another to help trace the place. By this time, the police too hadn’t responded to the calls put to their lines and so the wait for me lasted awhile before a colleague in one of the national dailies called back to intimate me of the location somewhere around Vandekiya Street in High Level vicinity.

It was nearly 8am when I hurriedly assembled my items – jotter, pen, recorder, phone and iPad, I would be needing them. I headed out to catch up with other colleagues also on their way to the scene of incident.

As I approached the end of Vandekiya Street entering from the St Theresa’s Catholic Church junction, I sighted a huge crowd surging from one side of the road so I immediately suspected that surrounding to be where the unbelievable had happened.

Tongues were swiftly wagging behind and in front of me by those who had caught glance of the blood-soaked bedroom where the five corpses of Nicholas Adetsav, his wife and three children were evacuated from by the police.

Some of the spectators were however cursing the deceased housewife, others blamed the husband for shielding his matrimony from third party interference in spite of many previous violence allegedly meted on him by the wife while few others wept for the innocent children allegedly slaughtered by their own mother.

So I eased through the crowd at the point where some television reporters were conducting interviews with eye witnesses’ as I tried to find a convenient position to capture on my mobile phone photos of people trooping in and out of the gate.

Satisfied after the pictures, I moved to enter the compound but was accosted by a ferocious looking young man likely to be in his 40s who demanded that I hand him my telephone for scrutiny.

Of course, I politely refused to succumb to his request, knowing in my mind that he was out for some kind of mischief. I however treaded softly, even pleading with him to let me be after disclosing my identity as a journalist who had come to do her job.

But my plea fell on deaf ears as the ‘guy’ held me to ransom, insisting to have my phone for perusal or cause me bodily harm just as he continuously yelled at me, calling me names as well as insulting women in general.

“Wicked woman! Na so dat one (Rachael) kill her children and her husband. Wetin you wan use my picture do? You wan kill me?” he ranted.

At this point, some people in the crowd came to my rescue, asking him to let me go on grounds that I had done nothing to warrant his harassment but he wouldn’t budge even when I also explained to him that the shots never focused on him.

He further threatened to fight anyone intervening in the matter while attracting the attention of his like-minds who by now were building tension with outrageous comments that more deaths would occur if I failed to surrender my handset.

Within the five minutes the exchange between us was going on, other journalists within the premises weren’t aware as every one of them had scattered around the vicinity in a bid to get some scoop about the incident.

However, respite came my way when a colleague, the correspondent of Galaxy Televison, Gabriel Ordia, stumbled on us (me and the quarrelsome man) as he was finding his way into the compound of the tragic event, and with Ordia’s intervention, the troublesome man agreed to let me flip through my phone camera to delete his image, if found in any of the photos.

In a short while, we all went through the photos I had taken, alas, it was only part of his belly region that was captured by the camera in two shots which I deleted instantly.

But he wasn’t satisfied, he further insisted on seeing all the photographs, which almost made the Galaxy reporter take on him. I however calmed the situation, allowed him to see for himself to avert any pending trouble, then he walked away shamefully.

As he left, some standers-by laughed away from his gaze and quietly hailed me for toeing the path of peace since it was obvious that the man wanted to cause trouble which might snowball into some sort of chaos capable of breaking down law and order.

I was glad it ended that way so I proceeded to do my other findings with the help of policemen in mufti who later arrived for further investigation.

I had access to talk to the very next neighbour of the deceased, a lawyer who was the first to call security operatives when he noticed that the violence of late Mrs. Adetsav had taken another dimension.

The presence of the security men also helped me in talking with the immediate younger brother of the deceased who could not say much as he grieved uncontrollably.

However, two of my colleagues, a few days after, escaped being lynched by relatives of the Adetsavs at the Makurdi Local Government council where they had gone to follow up on the story for their news outlets.

They were correspondents of The Sun and The Punch Newspapers, Rose Ejembi and John Charles, who in their bid to further gather information from families, colleagues and other relatives of the deceased, were met with stiff resistance.

The two reporters had gone to the Makurdi local council secretariat where both deceased husband and wife worked before their death. After speaking with some officials of the council, they had walked up to two women who were identified as members of Adetsav family and sought to have audience with them.

But, on discovering that they were journalists, one of the women flared up and started accusing journalists of writing rubbish about her family without consulting them.

As they urged her to calm down, the woman insisted that she would not interact with them because journalists were the architects of the misinformation and impression the public was getting about her family in respect to the sad incidence.

However as the reporters objected to the assertion by telling her that they took exception to her accusations because they knew nothing about the incident other than to do their job, the issue resulted in a slight argument which drew the attention of other members of the family and staff of the council as well as passers-by.

Sadly, within a twinkle of an eye, the family mobilized towards the two reporters with the intention to mob them and even went ahead to dispossess the Punch reporter of his gadget while they were trying to escape the mob action.

It took the intervention of some members of staff of the local government who whisked away the reporter of The Sun Newspaper through a window to the vigilantes’ office while the aggrieved family held the Punch correspondent hostage.

Soon, some officials of the National Union of Local Government Employees had to join forces with the vigilantes and other public-spirited individuals to whisk the two reporters out of the premises.

These experiences propelled the Benue State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists during its congress held within the same week to condemn the attack on the affected correspondents.

The union further appealed to the public to always cooperate with newsmen while they are carrying out their legitimate duties and called on the police and other security agencies in the state to ensure adequate protection of media practitioners in carrying out their duties without harassment.