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The forgotten five: Families of abducted funeral guests wait in vain three years after
Dagogo, a middle-aged small-scale contractor, alongside four other men from Bonny Local Government Area, Rivers State, on September 12, 2020, were abducted by gunmen at the funeral of a prominent chief, Amaopusenibo Kalada-Banigo.
It is been almost three years and they have not returned home. The gunmen took with them that day, not just the men, but the hopes of five families. The last time Nelly saw his father was the day before the incident.
As they both walked together, his father had asked him to accompany him to where he would board a taxi to the Bonny Jetty. Father and son, hand-in-hand, Dagogo told Nelly he was proud of him and shared the plans he had for him and their family.
Specifically, he shared how the coming of the Train 7 project by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas would change their lives.
These promises, like shadows, vanished with the darkness that enveloped them the moment relatives called his mother, Cordelia, to tell her that Dagogo had been kidnapped.
Nelly did not know until he saw a picture of his father online, collaged with those of the other victims. It was tagged, ‘The Banigo Five Kidnap’, named after the village where the incident happened.
“It was like my soul left my body. I was shocked and I did not even know who to ask if what I saw was true,” Nelly said when our correspondent visited his home in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Hope and hopelessness
According to Nelly, though his father had yet to hit it big, he was hard-working and could go to any length to provide for their family. To make ends meet, Dagogo reportedly spent more time in Bonny than he did with his family in Port Harcourt. Nelly stated that he occasionally sent money home, and always called to find out how they were doing.
“In a year, he might spend three months with us and the remaining nine in Bonny, where he worked on different jobs and contracts to put food on our table,” Nelly stated.
His mother worked as a school administrator with a government school.
Her salary is barely enough to do much, but Nelly said with combined efforts from his parents, they lived ‘comfortably’. Until his father was kidnapped.
Multiple sources, who spoke about the incident, said everything happened fast.
The pallbearers had carried the remains of Chief Banigo to the cemetery and as he was being interred, some masked men, riding on a boat and armed to the teeth, stormed the premises, desecrated the corpse and shot sporadically, wounding many.
They whisked along with them five men – Warisenibo Daniel Hart, Thompson Micah, Theophilus Ibiama, Dagogo, and his friend, Sunny Hart.
The burial was held in Finiapiri-Ama (Amauda) village, Banigo Isile-Ogono community, Bonny.
The then-leader of the Bonny Legislative Assembly, Miriam Hart, was severely injured and rushed to an undisclosed hospital in Port Harcourt, where sources said she fought for her life for months.
Some high-profile guests, who were at the event that day were the then Chairman of Bonny LGA, the late David Rogers-Irimagha; the lawmaker representing Bonny Constituency in the Rivers State House of Assembly, Abinye Pepple; and the LGA Peoples Democratic Party Chairman, Daniel Wilcox, who escaped by a whisker.
Other survivors included the Deputy Leader of the Eighth Assembly, Dieprinye Jumbo; the then Chief Whip of the House, Fiberesima Pepple; a councillor representing Ward Two, Kingston Robert Hart; among others.
According to a source, Sunny, one of the victims, was the husband of the first daughter of the deceased, who was a senior magistrate with the Rivers State Judiciary.
The then Rivers State Police command spokesperson, Nnamdi Omoni, confirmed the incident and said investigations were ongoing to unmask the perpetrators. Almost three years later, the criminals are still at large and the victims too, are nowhere to be found, dead or alive.
Nelly said his mother received a call from one of their extended relatives, who claimed the kidnappers demanded N60m for his father’s release.
“Even if we sell this house and everything in it, it will not give us N60m. So, we knew that our hopes were slim.”
Confused about what to do, Nelly said his mother began to make calls to potential donors, who they thought could help. But after a few days, nothing substantial was raised.
The 45-year-old woman said she was left with four kids to care for on a salary that was barely enough when her husband was around.
Buried without corpse
As the kidnappers called the Jackmays, they also called the family of Daniel Hart.
Their breadwinner, who is a titled citizen in Bonny, Daniel, was among the victims.
His daughter, Rita, recounting the incident in tears, said the family had not been the same since her father’s disappearance.
In an earlier interview, days after her father’s kidnap, she said the kidnappers demanded N10m for the release of the Warisenibo.
She said the morning after the kidnap, the abductors called and told them that they would keep beating her father till the money was paid. Stressing that the family would not be able to afford the huge sum, she begged the authorities to secure her father’s release.
Her mother, Ibifiri, said she was afraid that her husband might die as he was diabetic. Sunny, who was also kidnapped, is Daniel’s younger brother.
Ibifiri said her husband was a victim of mistaken identity, as he was not as wealthy as the hoodlums thought.
She said since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, her husband did not go out because of his ill health.
Narrating how he was kidnapped, she said Warisenibo had already joined a boat returning to Bonny Main Town from Ishile-Ogono Banigo when the gunmen struck and carried him and the four others into the creeks.
“I beg the kidnappers to release my husband. He is a retiree and a senior citizen and he is diabetic and prone to cold. I fear for his life.
“It was he and his younger brother, Hon. Sunny Hart that went to bury his father-in-law in Banigo when this incident happened,” she had said.
After a few months of waiting and hoping, the Harts summoned courage and buried the chief without his corpse.
“A burial was organised and some items representing him were put in the coffin and was buried”, a source close to the family disclosed.
Dreams deferred
For 21-year-old Nelly, his dream of becoming a medical doctor has been put on hold since his father’s disappearance.
His distraught family still carries the weight of the hope that one day, Dagogo will show up, thereby putting an end to their nightmare.
But before their eyes, days turned into weeks and weeks into months, as promises from the government and the police rusted with time.
“I thought this will be over in a few days, but it is three years this year. Nothing is happening. Nobody is talking about my father and the other four people anymore. My family is confused. What do we do? Is he (father) alive? Is he dead? It is really depressing for me. At my age, I shouldn’t be thinking about things like this,” he said, clasping both hands together tightly.
His other siblings, a girl and two other boys, will have to grow up with the stinging reality that their father may never come back.
Since the incident, Nelly said life had been difficult for his family and his mother had been struggling to keep the family afloat.
He, too, has had to grow up fast and become a man-child.
Since age 18 when his father was kidnapped, Nelly said he became the father figure in the home.
“I was trying to get to the university two years before my dad was kidnapped. I had even tried out the Post-United Tertiary Matriculation Examination at faraway University of Benin but I did not get the required cut-off mark.
“My father always supported my education but he is nowhere to be found. It feels weird not to have him around,” he added with a heavy sigh.
Sea piracy, kidnapping
Bonny Island, formerly Ibani or Ubani, is an Atlantic oil port in Rivers State.
It lies along the Bonny River, an Eastern tributary of the Niger River, which is six miles (10km) upstream from the Bight of Biafra.
Following the 2006 population census, the population in Bonny was estimated at 302,000.
Originally a traditional trading centre for fish, salt, palm oil and palm kernels, it is occupied by the Ijaw people and was the capital of the 15th to 19th century Kingdom of Grand Bonny.
It was also one of the largest slave-exporting depots in West Africa.
In 1790, according to Britannica, about 20,000 people were shipped to America and the Caribbean.
Since 1961, the Island has been the chief shipper of the Delta’s oil, and in 1964, its harbour was enlarged to accommodate vessels of up to 35-foot (11-metre) draft.
The port has numerous storage tanks for the oil brought in by pipelines. The exploration of crude oil and other natural gases and their exportation has been a significant economic booster on Bonny Island.
The NLNG and other oil companies, including Mobil, Agip, and Chevron, have a firm industry. Fishing is a job done by many indigenes who reside along the island’s water coast.
Despite its significant importance to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, the Islan