LIKE most residents of Igbide, an agrarian community in Isoko South Local Government Area, Delta State, Mr. Lucky Napoleon and his wife, Blessing, engage in subsistence farming, trading, and other business ventures as their means of livelihood.
A transporter who also assists his wife in her groundnut business, Napoleon and members of his household take advantage of the dry season to carry out their farming activities in expectation of a favourable yield in the harvest season.
So, when the couple set out for their cassava farm located around Ovwodokpokpor Grammar School, Igbide on December 23, 2021, their desire was to completely rid the farmland of weeds before joining the rest of the community in preparation for the Christmas celebration.
However, about thirty minutes after the couple commenced work on the farmland, nine gun-trotting men accosted them and beheaded the woman while the man escaped by the whiskers.
The remains of the mother of five were interred in the community on Thursday 30 December 2021 amidst wailing and lamentations.
Recounting his ordeal, Napoleon described the incident as a most shocking experience that had dealt a devastating blow on him and their five children.
He said: “I am a driver and my wife deals in groundnut. She goes to the north and brings groundnut to sell here. The farm that we do is for our feeding so that we don’t have to be buying garri. Presently, I don’t have a car, so I use my okada for our daily bread.
“On that fateful morning, at about some minutes past8am we went to weed our cassava farm. We left the house with a weed spraying pick and one jerry can of water.
“I carried my wife in a motorcycle to the farm which is just three poles after the secondary school, that is, behind the school. When we got to the farm, we started spraying the cassava. After about 30minutes, my wife was spaying the cassava; I was tilling the soil to plant new stems of cassava to replace those that had dried up.
“Suddenly, I raised my face and I saw nine armed men coming towards us and my wife was backing them as she was spraying the weeds. They ran speedily to where we were and started warning us not to run or they would shoot us.
“I started running and in the process, they shot my wife on the head and I fell down and they started shooting at me but it was God that rescued me.”
He disclosed that the assailants also vandalized his motorcycle.
‘Later, I and some members of the community went to the bush and saw my wife lying down; they burst her skull. Later, police officers were brought from Oleh divisional headquarters, took her to the mortuary. They did an autopsy on her before she was buried,” he said.
According to him, “She has five children for me; two boys and three girls; one of them is in the higher institution, one just finished secondary school, one is in JSS 3, one in JSS1and the other one in primary 5.
One of the cousins of the deceased, Mr. Orerome Grandball noted that “It is very sad and painful that young woman who went to the farm with her husband in a bid to fend for the family never returned home to meet with her children because her life has been cut shot.”
Contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer of the state police command, Mr. Bright Edafe, confirmed the killing.