The alleged assassins of Justice Margaret Igbetar, a retired president of the Customary Court of Appeal in Makurdi, Benue State, have described how they killed her for allegedly concealing documents pertaining to a family estate that belonged to one of them.
According to OBASANJO NEWS24, Justice Igbetar was assassinated in August by gunmen who broke into her Makurdi home on Wantor Kwange Street, across from the Benue State University School of Medicine.
A few days later, her decomposing remains were found by her family.
Her nephew Aondohemba Joseph, her driver, and a security guard were among the suspects displayed by the state’s commissioner of police, Batholomew Onyeka.
Joseph, the suspected gang leader and the deceased’s nephew, stated she had the deeds to his father’s landed property in her possession.
The late judge was Joseph’s aunt, and when we questioned her about having the documentation for my father’s landed property, she was evasive.
“I had to make plans with other people. Dzungwenen Ukor, not I, was the one who actually stabbed her.
The deceased was stabbed, as corroborated by Ukor, and he claimed Joseph instructed him to do it because she would not give over the property records for his father’s estate, which he claimed were in her hands.
“He asked me to stab her, and I did that because he had accused the woman of withholding documents of his father’s landed property,” Ukor claimed.
Akuhwa Barnabas, 32, a different suspect, claimed he was simply instructed to man the gate after being hired as a driver to the deceased person’s residence two months before to the occurrence.
I was hired by the dead as a driver two months prior to the occurrence, and they genuinely contacted me to say that they would pay me after they had the necessary paperwork and sold the property.
“So, I was instructed to stand at the entrance and prevent anyone from entering. When they were done, they departed, and I also fled to avoid being arrested.
While being held in detention, the suspects are assisting with the police investigation.
