A nine-year-old girl named Precious was reportedly killed by her employer, Mrs. Ujunwa Ugwoke, in Enugu State, leading a 37-year-old aspiring artist named James Achikpi Korshima to seek redress.
According to reports, Ugwoke beat the girl, who served as her live-in housekeeper, to death and dumped her body in a bush, where it was later set on fire by the community’s traditional leader.
In an interview with an Enugu-based human rights organization, the deceased’s father, Korshima, stated:
“Since March 2022, my daughter has been residing with Ujunwa at Fidelity Estate, Enugu. On November 10, 2022, I got an odd call from an unidentified caller using Ujunwa’s number. The caller claimed to have kidnapped Ugwuoke, her infant, and my daughter and was demanding a N20 million ransom.
“I spoke to Mrs. Ujunwa’s family and her husband, who is reside in a foreign country. To my utter surprise, they all pretended not to know about the purported kidnapping.
In an odd turn of events, Mrs. Ugwoke and her own daughter were claimed to have been freed from the kidnapper’s hideout, and Precious was allegedly killed, according to Mrs. Ujunwa.”
“I reported the incident right away to the New Haven Police Station in Enugu, and the Anti-Kidnapping Squad division of the Enugu Police command received the information.
After a few days at the anti-kidnapping station, Ugwuoke finally confessed that she had killed Precious by beating her to death before dumping the body off the Port-Harcourt Expressway just after the military checkpoint after the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu.”
According to Korshima, the police told him that after visiting the scene they discovered that the youth had been given permission by the community’s traditional leader to burn the deceased person’s body because of the unpleasant odor it was emitting.”
Additionally, he said that the traditional chief committed an illegal conduct without alerting security personnel to the body’s location.
