Wonders, they say, shall nev­er end. Or, how else does one describe a situation where a young medical doctor who died in a motor accident on the way to his wedding on October 10, 2013 withdrew about N4.3m from his own account in Union Bank in Kaduna few weeks after his death? Information from the bank indicated that the dead man used the ATM card to make the withdrawals.
New twist

A new twist emerged when the dead man applied for an ATM card from his bank and used it to clear his account. A family source said: “When Chidiebere died, we discovered that his mobile telephone num­ber had been blocked. We were surprised because no member of our family told the GSM service provider that Chidiebere had died. So, we took up the matter and it took some time before the line was reactivated.

“We got the shock of our lives after re­activating the line. As soon as we switched on the phone, we began to receive alerts of withdrawals from his account. All the withdrawals were made after he had died and had been buried. During his life time, he did not use ATM cards but in death, he applied for ATM card from the bank in Kaduna and started withdrawing all the money in his account. Worse still, Chidie­bere was not the owner of all the money in the account. One of his brothers who went abroad in search of greener pastures was sending money to Chidiebere to keep for him. Now, the brother is back and Chidie­bere’s corpse had withdrawn all the money as the bank wants us to believe.”

It was learnt that the family has con­tacted the bank on the strange withdrawals but it has been prevaricating over the issue.

Saturday Sun had, on November 16, 2013, published the pathetic story of Dr Chidiebere Emmanuel Nwanja, who died on the way to Okposi in Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State to con­tract marriage with his sweet heart, Miss Celina Uzor.

According to the report “Their tradi­tional marriage rite otherwise called Ig­bankwu was fixed for Monday, October 14, 2013 while the white wedding was billed for Tuesday, October 15 at the Pres­byterian Church, Okposi Okwu.

“On October 10, Chidiebere left Kadu­na where he was practising for his home­town for the marriage ceremony. He was in company with his younger brother, Kel­echi Nwanja and Mr Ifeanyi, an indigene of Onicha Igboeze, who was supposed to play the role of best man. While they jour­neyed, the bride and groom kept in touch via telephone. In fact, Celina and about seven of her friends, the asebi girls, were already in town putting finishing touches to the arrangement.

“The journey was smooth until they got to Udi in Enugu. There, the unexpected happened. They had a fatal accident in which the groom and his best man died on the spot. Only Kelechi survived but he sus­tained serious injuries.

“Narrating the tragedy that befell the family, Chidiebere’s elder brother, Mr Ndubuisi Nwanja, in an emotion laden voice, said: ‘When I got the information that my brother was involved in an acci­dent, I rushed to the place but before I got there, the police had already been there. They took Kelechi to Annunciation Hos­pital, a Catholic hospital, in Emene, Enugu and deposited the corpses of Chidiebere and Ifeanyi at a mortuary in Udi because the accident happened in Udi, at the bypass before Four – Corner. The following day we went to the hospital to see the corpses.’


“He added that the family committed the resources already earmarked for the marriage to the burial of the young medi­cal doctor. ‘The family met and decided to bury him immediately; we did not want to keep the corpse in the mortuary. So, we went to the mortuary, took the corpse and buried. The wake keep held on October 14 while the burial took place on October 15. His traditional marriage was supposed to hold on October 14 while the church wed­ding would take place on October 15, the day he was eventually buried. We decided to use the things he bought for the tradi­tional marriage and Church wedding for his burial. He had already bought drinks and hired chairs, tables, canopies and mu­sical groups and we decided to use these things he had paid for to bury him.’

The report disclosed that the tale as­sumed a new dimension on October 18 when the family went to the accident site to retrieve the car or what was left of it and personal effects.

A family source said in the report: ‘We tried to bring the car out of the place it fell into but we could not. So, we decided to axe the car into pieces there. While we were at it, a commercial bus driver from Udi who operates between Enugu and Port Harcourt saw us and parked his ve­hicle. He asked us if we were the relation of the doctor and we told him everything. He said that he was the person that helped the police to bring the doctor out of the car but, unfortunately, he was already dead. He said that he was the one that removed his clothes and while removing the clothes he saw a huge sum of money that he was coming back with and he handed every­thing over to the police. But the police did not even make mention of the money, let alone release it to us. They only gave us the luggage he was coming back with. They didn’t tell us that there was any mon­ey involved.’

The report added that the family had gone to the police station at Udi with a view to recovering the money to no avail, as policemen there claimed to be unaware of the money.