Maduka Nweke
Governor Willie Obiano, of Anambra State has asked the Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria, Boss Mustapha, to use his good offices to get the South African police authorities to take serious steps to unravel the murder of a Nigerian corporate executive, Mrs Elizabeth Obianuju Ndubisi Chukwu, in Johannesburg last month.
Mrs Ndubuisi-Chukwu, Deputy Director General of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), was found dead in her room at Emperor Palace Hotel on Thursday, June 13, while attending a meeting of the African Insurance Organisation in the South African commercial capital.
Governor Obiano in a letter to Mr Mustapha, which was released recently in Awka, Anambra State, by the state Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Mr C. Don Adinuba, explained that it had become necessary to request the SGFN to personally wade into the killing because the police in Johannesburg may be capitalising on the absence of a foreign minister in Nigeria to treat the case with levity.
The governor said that reports he has received on the death of the 53-year old indigene of Anambra State “and my analysis of the reports suggest that the South African police are treating this murder as just another Nigerian’s death in their country”.
Emperor Palace Hotel as explained at the weekend that it has not released the CCTV footage to the police because they had yet to request for it.
“It is disheartening that over three weeks after the dastardly act the South African police have not deemed it necessary to investigate the heinous crime with the seriousness it deserves”, Obiano observed.
“Mrs Ndubuisi-Chukwu was not an ordinary person, but a top corporate executive who was billed to become early next year the chief executive of her organization and was representing Nigeria at the meeting in Johannesburg where she met her untimely death”.
The South African Department of Home Affairs had in an autopsy report stated that Mrs Ndubuisi-Chukwu was strangulated, contradicting some earlier reports suggesting that she might have died in her sleep or committed suicide.