One family, many troubles
By Sun News Publishing
Saturday, January 19, 2008

•Innocent on wheel chair Photo: Sun News Publishing

Living index

The family of Innocent Ukpong of Ikot Obuk in Obot Akara Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State who resides at 9 Community Street, Ogba used to be the ideal family many would wish for. But now, it has been thrown into a state of want and confusion; with its 22-year-old son missing.

In the last two years, Ukpong’s family has suffered untold calamities comparable to that of the biblical Job. Consequently, his wife, Juliana Ukpong sent an SOS to the First Lady of Akwa Ibom State, Mrs. Ekaete Unoma Godswill Akpabio, over the sudden and mysterious disappearance of her son, Ubon Innocent Ukpong, a final year student of the department of Surveying and Geoinformatics of University of Lagos.
The family had suffered so much, the most recent being the disappearance of Ubon on Saturday, 17 November, 2007, she lamented.

Mrs. Ukpong who claimed to have been bedridden for over two years was struck with a strange illness that soon paralyzed her hands and legs. Strangely, the illness started suddenly while she was driving to Ogba market in Lagos. After exhausting all the family’s money and selling most of their belongings to treat the ailment and there was no result, she was advised to return home and seek alternative treatment.

In Akwa Ibom, it was another round of visits to practitioners of alternative medicine and prayer houses until she was inexplicably healed. While still in Akwa Ibom, her husband who had gone insolvent was involved in ghastly car accident which saw him losing all feelings in the legs and has left him in the wheel chair since then.

While still mourning the ill luck that has befallen the family, Ubon who was writing his long essay called his parents to complain that he wasn’t feeling fine, he was advised to go to the hospital for treatment which he said he would do. In the morning of 17 November, 2007 he called his parents and told them he was getting better. However when his mother called again later in the day, his phone rang several times without response, which according to her was very strange.

All frantic efforts to get across to him proved abortive, his parents had to reach out to a relative who went to his place of residence, only to discover the door was left ajar with all his belongings including his GSM phone intact.

Since then all enquiries about his whereabouts have proven futile.
None of his neighbours could provide answer sudden disappearance. However Mrs. Ukpong said a nurse friend of hers who saw him some days before his disappearance claimed Ubon was behaving in a strange manner, talking to himself and when she asked him why he didn’t come for treatment, he retorted that he went with a pastor to an undisclosed church where he got treated.

Another day, she saw him preaching to somebody on the street and when she greeted and enquired where he was going to, he replied that he was going where she expected him to go. That was the last time he was seen. Since then, no other person can tell his whereabouts.

Mrs. Ukpong who described the missing boy as a God-fearing Christian and very quiet person who does not keep company also narrated her unfruitful attempt at getting the police involved in the search for her missing son. She said at the police station in Ogba where she asked a relative to register the incidence, the relative was asked to come up with an undisclosed sum of money before it could be investigated or treated formally.