•Dead kids dad Photo: Sun News Publishing

More Stories on This Section

Grief-stricken mother of three kids who were burnt to death when fire engulfed their home in Lagos, Mrs Blessing Nwafor, has expressed a wish: “I want to see God. When I see Him, I would ask why He gave me these three children only to take them away from me in this manner. I want to tell Him that He shouldn’t have given me the children at all if that was how they were going to die.”

Mrs Nwafor’s three children, a set of twins, Chinedu and Chinonso, aged four, and two years old daughter, Ada, died in an inferno that gutted the building where they lived at Alhaji Bello Ibira Street, Oke-Odo area of Lagos.

When told that God could still give her more children, the grieving mother snapped: “Twenty children cannot replace these my dead children. Even if I have 20 children tomorrow, they will not replace these three.
“We spent so much to bring them up to this level. We put them in one of the best schools around, ask people in the area. It is because of them that I am suffering. I can’t forget this experience, this loss. Even if I have 20 children tomorrow, it is only God who can save me from this trauma.”

Did Mrs Nwafor actually put oil on the fire before going to the market, leading to the fire outbreak, as alleged by her landlady?
She said: “I can’t do such a thing. How can I do such a thing? The potatoes we ate in the morning of that day was warmed in the morning. The fresh food that would have been cooked in the house in the evening was what made me go to the market.”

The father of the deceased children, Stephen Nwafor, 34, has, since the tragedy turned to alcohol to drown his sorrow. The excessive drinking, he told Daily Sun, was to make him forget the evil that befell him. But as is always the case, when the effect of the drink fades out, he would again be faced with the stark reality that his three lovely children are no more.

Daily Sun learnt that Stephen, who couldn’t stand to watch his three children consumed by fire, wanted to jump into the raging inferno but was stopped by neighbours.
He lamented: “They were my source of happiness and now, they are gone. I dream of them. My little daughter, Ada, appeared to me in the dream saying, ‘Daddy, kiss me,’ but when I suddenly woke up, tears rolled down my cheeks.”

Stephen, who operates a beer parlour at Ikeja, said he now squats with his in-laws at Dopemu, Agege, while his wife has gone back to Awgu, their country home, in Enugu State.
“Now, I don’t have where to live. I’m squatting with my in-laws. If I am hanging around as a man, you don’t expect my wife to hang around too. She can come back when I have rented even one room, though, I was living in a flat before,” he said.

Counting the losses he incurred beside the death of his children, Stephen explained that he lost his shares certificates, cash and property worth over N400, 000, to the inferno.
He said his brother, Michael, also lost N780, 000 and his international passport, while his wife fainted when she heard the news and was rushed to a nearby hospital.