Posted by By CHRIS AGUNWEZE, Bonny Island on
A fisherman in his early thirties, Charles Omele,who is now a guest of the police in Bonny, Rivers State, for killing his eight year old step-daughter and leaving his wife at the point of death after a sledge hammer attack on the duo last month (March 18, 2006) has accused the wife as the cause of his ill luck.
A fisherman in his early thirties, Charles Omele,who is now a guest of the police in Bonny, Rivers State, for killing his eight year old step-daughter and leaving his wife at the point of death after a sledge hammer attack on the duo last month (March 18, 2006) has accused the wife as the cause of his ill luck.
In a chat with Saturday at the Bonny Police Station shortly after he was arrested, Omele also accused the wife of occassionally transforming into a dragon.
Omele's close door neighbours at workers camp (a suburb of Bonny where NLNG construction workers live) and where the brutal murder took place told Saturday Sun that trouble seemed to have started between Omele and his wife, Julie, during the wee hours of Saturday morning (18/3/2006) when Julie was said to have givena loud wail and abruptly stopped.
According to the neighbours, when the day broke, they went into Omele's room and met it a house of horror. Julie lay unconscious in her pool of blood with her head smashed. Her eight year old daughter Juliet (whom she had with another man) lay beside her stone dead with the skull opened. According to them, Omele was caught while he was trying to escape with the two year old son that Julie had for him.
The neighborhood immediately formed a mob and descended on the evil man and would have lynched him but for timely intervention of the police.
The accused who was said to have put up an innocent appearance, to suggest that he was not the architect of the murderous deeds would later confess carrying out the sordid act. He, however, insisted that it was the head of a sea dragon he smashed with the sledge hammer.
Eager to tell his own side of the story, Omele said to Saturday Sun 'Oga, wait make I tell my own side of the story, may be you will understand me better".
He narrated a long story of how he brought his wife some years back from Delta State and opened a shop for her. According to him, he started having ill luck immediately the wife joined him in Bonny. He said as from then on, anything he tries his hands on fails, including NLNG construction jobs. So he had to go into fishery.
Mammy Water
The embattled husband further told Saturday Sun that at a point, his wife Julie began to appear to him in dream in the likeness of a ‘mammy water (marine spirit).
Although both usband and wife are from Iri in Isoko South local government area of Delta State, he said that during such dreams Julie often boasts that she is the queen and owner of the entire Bonny kingdom and that she would make him a governor only if he agrees with her government. But he declined to become governor in her government because according to him, he discovered that she intended to make him an evil governor.
The accused who claimed to be a gospel musician, even felt relaxed enough to sing one of his tracks to the Saturday Sun reporter. The gospel song which he rendered in English language with an Iri dialect refrain, warns children of God to be ware that there is devil in the church.
Omele was optimistic that his compositions would have topped the gospel chart but regretted that he never succeeds in cutting any of them into an album for commercial marketing, no matter how hard he tries.
He lamented that the last time he went to record a demo, immediately they began, the thing blew up, covering the entire studio with smoke and the studio manager sent him away.
He said that he became suspicious of his wife and
took her to a native doctor but the native doctor just said that he saw four beasts. When asked if the native doctor accused the wife of been one of the beasts, Omele said ‘no'.
Sea dragon
Nevertheless, Omele recalled that the whole seniaro took a more dangerous dimension when, according to him, his wife began to appear to him in real life as a sea dragon. He claimed that on many occasions his wife had appeared to him physically as a dragon threatening to devour him.
In reaction to this, Omele said, he restricted his wife to store, asking her never to visit his room again.
In spite of all the warning, Omele said Julie on that fateful day at the wee hours, opened the door crashed into his room and transformed into a sea dragon. He said, he lifted a sledge hammer he has been keeping and smashed the sea dragon on the head on time before it struck first. He stressed that he had to end it before the sea beast ate him up.
Asked if his eight-year-old step-daughter also changed to dragon before he killed her, the otherwise very forthcoming accused person suddenly became tongue-tied. He also kept silent when he was asked why he did not send Julie away instead of killing her.
When it was suggested that he might be under manipulation to think that his wife was a dragon or could be suffering from hallucination, Omele replied: 'Oga before I de smoke (Indian hemp) but now I no de smoke again. It was, obviously, his own way of reaffirming that he was in control of all his senses.
Tired of changing men
But the Omeles' Iri neighbours at the workers camp insisted that he is still deep into hemp smoking habit. 'In fact, drinking local gin and smoking hemp is what he does with the money he realizes from fishing" a neighbour maintained, adding that it was his wife who works hard to feed him and the children. Similarly, other neighbours had it that on several occasion Omele had threatened to kill the wife, but maintained that it was always in the heat of one misunderstanding or the other.
They said he even bought a marchet, which he regularly sharpens with a file and may have actually wanted to carry out his threat with the machete one day. But to probably put a lie to the machete story of the neighbours, Omele did not draw any machete against his wife. He used a hammer.
On why the wife didn't leave him before he killed her, they said that she was staying on moral ground. According to them, Julie had complained that having had a daughter from another man and a son with Charles that she felt it would be a shame to go to another man and start having children all over again. She was reported as saying that she will stay for better for worse 'unfortunately she got the worse," they stressed.
As it is, it is now left to the court, when Omele is eventually charged, to decide on what to make of the accused man's mammy water, sea dragon and queen of the coast story
However, the D.P.O. of Bonny Mr. T.Y. Omojola (C.P) confirmed the story but declined further comments, saying that he is not authorized to speak to the press.