Do you see the plate of rice above? Does it look attractive to you? Do
you feel tempted to have a taste? Sadly that’s what 7 year old Favour
Ekerete was killed for eating. . . Her dad beat her so bad despite ill
health, for eating the plate of rice he prepared, that she gave up the
ghost soon after.
According to the Nigerian Tribune, favours father Mr Kingsley Ekerete a
29year old commercial driver who hails from Akwa Ibom State, with just a
First Leaving Certificate and has to drive his bus daily through the
bustling traffic of Port Harcourt to make ends meet and put food on the
table for his young family.
On this fateful day of April 12, 2014, Kingsley returned home like every
other day at 1900hrs, already famished. He hurried down to the pot of
rice he had prepared before leaving for work only to find that his also
hungry daughter, Favour, had helped herself to the meal he had reserved
for himself.
Kingsley’s animal instincts became awakened and what followed were fits
of mad rage as the red-eyed father unleashed his beastly tendencies on
his seven-year-old daughter.
Little Favour Ekerete, who had been ill before this time, cried herself
to sleep and her illness worsened as a result of the beating she
received from her father. According to Kingsley’s own confession, she
died some hours later.
He then proceeded to place the corpse at a corner of his one-room
apartment, an apartment that also housed his two other children aged two
and three, not even giving a thought to the implications of keeping the
dead child with her frightened siblings.
The kids bore the ordeal as the remains of Favour spent a whole night
with them before their father, having made sure his neighbours were all
fast asleep, wrapped the corpse in his own clothing, took a shovel and
buried it in a shallow grave behind his room.
But Favour’s spirit must have cried out from that shallow grave for
justice, for as much as Kingsley tried to cover his crime, he was soon
found out. One Ugwu, the caretaker of the building where Kingsley
resides, noticed the strange and sudden disappearance of Favour, who had
been the darling of neighbours.
She (Ugwu) quizzed her father about her whereabouts and the latter spun a
story of how the child had taken ill and how he had taken her to a
hospital in neighbouring Umuebulu community where she had died.
But Ms Ugwu insisted on seeing the corpse, which Kingley blatantly
refused to oblige her. She then threatened to report to the police. But
before then, she informed a neighbour, one Pastor Emeka Onuoha, of the
situation.
While this was going on, men of the Afam Police Division who were on
patrol were flagged down by the pastor. Kingsley was arrested and, after
interrogations, was transferred to the State Criminal Investigation
Department, Rivers State.
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.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Father Beats His Child to Death in Port Harcourt, Over a Plate of Rice!
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