The saying goes a hungry man is an angry man, but at what point does that anger transcend into a maddening rage. Well that’s the question many in Obimama, Oyigbo Local Government Area of Rivers state are left wondering after a 29-year-old man, Kingsley Ekerete, murdered his seven-year-old daughter over a plate of boiled rice.
Kingsley a commercial driver who is from Nto Osung community in Ikot Ekpene Local Area of Akwa Ibom State arrived home at 7 pm on April 12 to find that his famished daughter, Favour had eaten the meal he reserved in the pot.
He beat the daughter to a pulp and she gave up the ghost hours later.
According to his confession he waited till all the neighbours and his two other children were asleep then he wrapped her in his own clothing and buried her in a shallow grave behind his room.
Karma began to catch up with Kingsley after the caretaker of the compound, Ugwu, noticed the absence of Favour and began to make inquiries as to her whereabouts. Initially the father lied that she had died of illness in a neighbouring community, Umuebulu until Ugwu insisted on seeing the corpse.
Ugwu reported the matter to another neighbour, one Pastor Emeka Onuoha and he immediately involved the police who arrested and interrogated Kingsley.
Tribune reports
In an attempt to cover his crime, Kingsley gave different accounts to the police, claiming that the mother of his children abandoned him to take care of their ailing child alone and the child had died for lack of attention while he toiled for find money. Yet in another account, he claimed that being so poor, he had deposited his mobile phone with a Hausa rice seller in order to get the rice that he had prepared to feed the children, not knowing that the rice had been poisoned.
When asked to lead the police to the location of Favour’s corpse, he also gave conflicting accounts. He first said she had died on the way to the hospital and so he buried her somewhere along the way and couldn’t remember where it was. Then he later said that the body was in a mortuary at a neighbouring village.
But the truth was unfolded when his parents, Mr and Mrs Ekerete, visited the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID). They told the police of Kingsley’s strange behaviour even toward the mother of his children, who ran away from home to avoid his excesses. Kingsley’s father also narrated how his son had called him immediately after the child’s death.
He has since taken the police to the site where he buried his daughter in a grave so shallow that the corpse is visible even without exhumation.
Speaking on the development, the Commissioner of Police, Tunde Ogunsakin, explained that his men, after receiving the case file from Afam Police Station, noticed that Kingsley’s explanation on his missing daughter was suspicious and that efforts to reach the mother of the deceased was rebuffed when police started investigation.
He said that this is a case of homicide and that considering the nature of the crime, Kingsley would need to go through a psychiatric test before he is taken to court for prosecution.
According to Ogunsakin, the Child’s Rights Act Sections 4 and 14 state that this is a violation of the child’s right to survival and development as well as parental care and protection.