Okey Sampson, Umuahia
God in the Bible, Exodus 20: 10, gave man the injunction: “…But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son, your daughter, your manservant, your maidservant, your domestic animals, or the sojourner within your gates.…That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it”.
For Juliet Chukwu, 33, a mother of two who hailed from Umuenyi village, Umueze Akwunano, Enugu State, but lived in Aba, Abia State that Bible injunction meant nothing to her. Not only did she disobey God by engaging in some kind of work, she also committed abomination by taking her own life more so on a day mankind was to hold as God’s day.
Juliet, in 2011, got married to her husband, Elijah Chukwu, a luxury bus driver who shuttles from Aba to Lagos. On Sunday morning (December 15), she was said to have swept her restaurant and the adjourning premises and excused some people around to go to her house to bring some items, a journey she never returned from.
With the hope she had prepared and went to church, people around never bothered about her whereabouts not until after sometime, when her four-year-old daughter started streaming inside their room for her mother to give her food that neighbours knew they were around.
To the consternation of neighbours who came to find why Juliet’s daughter was streaming and she couldn’t attend to her, when they came in, they saw the mother of two dangling between the ceiling fan in her bedroom and the floor and stone dead while her two children were watching, still calling on her to give them food. The stool with which she climbed herself to death was still there.
Juliet did not leave any suicide note behind, which has led to people speculating on why she took her life. The first was the rumour that the husband who was said to have left for over one month to Lagos and had not returned, married another woman in Lagos and that Juliet was unhappy about that. She was reported to have before taking her life complained to her mother that she was tired of life. The mother, a source said, asked her to return home, to which she agreed.
Another version was that Juliet’s action had some spiritual undertone. It was said that a day before the mother of two took her life, three lizards were found dead in her shop, one of them hanging upright from the ceiling. However, this could not be ascertained.
Speaking to Sunday Sun on the incident, Sunday Chukwu, elder brother of Juliet’s husband who incidentally brought her corpse down from where it hanged, said as far as he was concerned, the woman had no reason to take her wife, welfare-wise. He said it is true that Elijah, the deceased husband as a luxury bus driver could travel for weeks before returning home, but that he made sure the woman did not lack anything.
“The house where she lived was the husband’s and the man opened a restaurant business for her that would be sustaining her financially.
“She did not leave any note behind as to indicate she had issues with the husband or that she was sick and there was no time the husband reported he had any issue with the wife. The husband travelled for over one month and was planning to come home any moment for the Christmas before he got the information of what the wife did. As we speak, nobody would say what her problem was as she did not write it nor told anybody”.
On the rumour that the woman committed suicide because the husband married another woman and kept in Lagos, Sunday said: “There was nothing like that, if there was anything to that nature I as the head of the Chukwu family would have been informed first. Why would the husband marry another wife? The wife had two children for him, there was not reason my brother would go for another wife moreover since we are not polygamists”.
Asked about her health condition as Juliet was reported to be demented and there was no proper care which could have caused her action, Sunday responded: “It was not up to two months she came back from the father’s house because that is where she normally went when it was time for her to take the treatment for her health problem which wasn’t much pronounced. She used to go to UNTH, Enugu for the treatment and it was her parents that normally take her to hospital for that and it is the husband that always sent money for such treatments. The last treatment she went for, she stayed up to three months and when her people felt she was all right, they allowed her home. It was up to one month she came back, the incident happened”.
On what he believed could have prompted Juliet to take her own life, Sunday who never believed the lizards’ story, however, said that there must be spiritual power behind what she did.
“I never saw her as someone that could take her life; I strongly believe there must be spiritual power stronger than her that was behind her action”. He promised the family would take care of the two children she left behind.
We contacted, the state Commissioner of Police, Ene Okon said that the police would carry out investigation and if nobody was found culpable, they would bury the deceased without further action.