Wife Of Murdered Conductor Mourns Late Husband

The widow of the Danfo bus conductor allegedly killed by policemen attached to the Lagos Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA, along the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway two weeks ago, Mrs. Ini Abasirim, has revealed that life has not been easy for her and her four children who have been rendered fatherless by the mindless government officials.

The 30-year-old woman who is pregnant with her fifth child, says she is yet to come to terms with the fact that her husband and father of her children is no more.

The late Ikechukwu Abasirim was push off a speeding commercial bus by the security operatives because he refused to give them a bribe and since then, life has not been the same for his wife and children aged 14, 11, 7 and 4.

The widow who did not have any premonition of death on the day she lost the love of her life, told the Vanguard Newspaper that on the day her 36-year-old husband died, he had woken up at about 6am, a time considered late for bus conductors.

He reportedly jumped up from the bed to have a quick bath. Thereafter, he donned his shirt and dashed out of the room, bidding his wife whom he fondly called mummy, goodbye.

Later that day, he reportedly rushed back and instructed his wife not to allow the children go out of her sight when they returned from school and bid her farewell again, not knowing that it was his final farewell.

Everything was going on well with the pregnant woman until about 2pm when an uproar was heard outside. Crestfallen neighbours and friends who heard news of her husband’s death were wailing outside their house. She came out dumbfounded and could not fathom what was amiss until she saw her husband in a pool of his blood, stone dead, inside a commercial bus.

I know I am dreaming and will definitely wake up to find out that my husband is by my side. Where do I start from?

I was preparing for a church programme that day. In fact, I was just bringing out the cloth I would wear that evening when one of my children ran in shouting ‘Mummy, Mummy! Daddy!’ .

I asked what about daddy and he dragged my hand outside. On reaching outside, I saw a mammoth crowd gathered round a commercial bus. In my confused state, I rushed to where the bus was and to my shock, I found my husband who doubled as my friend, father, brother and confidant, lying in the pool of his blood. I shook him and shouted,’Daddy, Daddy, what happened, who did this to you’? But I was greeted with dead silence.

I begged him to wake up so we could continue from where we stopped but he did not respond. When I asked what happened, I was told he was calling passengers at Second Rainbow Bus-Stop when two buses in which were officials of LASTMA that were chasing an erring bus driver ran towards him. One of the buses knocked him down while the other ran over him. They did not even care to wait to rush my husband to the hospital. They abandoned him to bleed to death.

Other bus drivers rushed him to two private hospitals where he was rejected, as the hospitals staff demanded for police report before treatment would be carried on him. They were on their way to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, when he breathed his last. We were told that as he was being rushed to the hospital, he kept saying that LASTMA officials were responsible for his state.

My husband never joked with the education of his children. He had plans to train them to university level, even if it meant carrying loads or pushing trucks. In fact, he had started saving towards our first child’s university education so that the burden would not be much on him.

Now, he will never live to see his dreams come true, no thanks to LASTMA officials who snuffed life out of him. My late husband was not rich but he was a very good husband and father. He never raised his hand towards me since I married him. I would miss him forever, as no one can take his place.

His death has left a vacuum in me. I just wish I would wake up and discover this is all a dream. The greatest challenge now is how to cater for our four children and the unborn one. The only person that was helping out lies stone dead in the morgue. Where do I start picking the pieces of my life?