TELL Magazine

…Claim it was in Obedience to the Lord’s Instruction

Residents of a neighbourhood in Benin City, Edo State capital, were shocked at the weekend to discover the decomposed corpse of a 78-year-old woman in her apartment kept there by her two daughters nine days after her death.

Strangely, the two women, Grace Osagede, 60, and her younger sister, Theresa Suberu, 58 years, told their bewildered neighbours that they were instructed by God not to disclose the death of their septuagenarian mother, Agnes Agbenese Oshoma, to anybody.

The incident happened at Universal Road, Medical Stores Road, in the Okhoro axis of Benin.

Tell gathered that the two sisters had carried on as if nothing was amiss until the offensive odour oozing from their apartment became unbearable and the neighbours decided to barge in only to be confronted with the unsightly bloated corpse of the deceased who they fondly called Iye, (mother or mama).

It was further learnt that even when curious neighbours who were uncomfortable with the stench emanating from the building confronted them, they waved it off and carried on with their normal activities.

But when the bubble finally burst, Grace, the older of the two sisters, told the perplexed crowd that had gathered that she had instruction from the Lord not to disclose the death of their mother to anybody, a position that was corroborated by her younger sister, Theresa, who said her elder sister asked her not to tell anyone as “instructed by the Lord”.

The landlord of the house and neighbours, were said to have arranged for the evacuation of the corpse to a morgue while the police were called in.

When contacted, the public relations officer of the Edo State Police Command, Kotongs Bello, confirmed the incident.

According to Bello, “The police have evacuated the corpse. The sisters were not arrested because there was no reasonable ground to arrest them. Every family has the right to their culture and since there is no evidence to show that they compromised the law, there is no reason to arrest them”.

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