BY AGNES NWORIE, ABAKALIKI
Police in Ebonyi State have arrested a patent medicine dealer, Desmond Onwe, for allegedly administering drugs to Obiageri Utoh, a pregnant woman.
The expectant mother died shortly after developing some complications.
Onwe, an indigene of Umuogudeoshia community in Ohaukwu Local Government Area of the state, who sells drugs at the popular Okwor-Ngbo market in the community, was accused of administering ‘wrong or expired drugs’ to the deceased.
It was gathered that the 26-year-old Utoh, an indigene of Amaoffia village approached Onwe on February 22 with a complaint that she was down with headache and waist pain.
The mother of two, whose pregnancy was in the seventh month, reportedly died on February 28, from severe complications after taking the drugs.
Angered by the development, the youths of the community reportedly stormed Onwe’s store, but he was said to have narrowly escaped being lynched as some elders in the village intervened.
In an interview, Joseph Utoh, husband to the deceased, accused the medicine dealer of being responsible for his wife’s death, insisting that Onwe must face the wrath of the law.
“I kicked against the attempted jungle justice because two wrongs can never make a right. As uneducated villagers, we see Desmond as being qualified though we hear some ugly stories of this kind from time to time”
“How can my seven-month pregnant wife just die like that? When I came back from work on Tuesday, 22nd February, my wife told me she was having minor waist pain and headache but had gotten some drugs from Desmond (suspect) earlier in the afternoon and its dosage was for five days. The following day, as a carpenter, I got a job that took me to Afikpo North Local Government Area for five days only to return home to meet the unfortunate incident.
“During my stay in Afikpo, I spoke with her on the telephone for three days; she told me she was getting better. On the fourth and fifth day, I couldn’t reach her, neither could I reach my mother nor any of my siblings to ascertain the situation of things.
“Desmond must tell me the drug he gave to my wife which killed her and my first son. He has used my wife and son for money rituals. I won’t take this. He (Onwe) has made me a widower at 32,” Utoh lamented.
In an interview, Agbo Omeh, the village head accused the government of giving practice licences to quacks and without thorough supervision.
“I kicked against the attempted jungle justice because two wrongs can never make a right. As uneducated villagers, we see Desmond as being qualified though we hear some ugly stories of this kind from time to time. If the government conducts thorough supervision of such medicine dealers in the hinterlands, they would have found expired drugs or whatever that led to deaths,” he said.
The village female leader, Modesta Ominyi, called for a well-equipped hospital in the community to avert avoidable deaths.
She said, “This is the kind of story we hear most times because there is no equipped hospital in the state except the usually over-crowded Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital in Abakaliki. If there was a good hospital or even equipped health centre in this community, that woman (deceased pregnant woman) wouldn’t have gone to a patent dealer. Or, when the complication was noticed, it would have been stopped.
“She died on the way to the teaching hospital because it is a long distance from Umuogudeoshia community to Abakaliki.”
When contacted, the police spokesperson in the state, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Loveth Odah, confirmed the incident, saying that the matter was being investigated by the command.
Odah said that the suspect had been arrested, stressing that he would be prosecuted after police investigations had been concluded on the matter.
