It has been a sad moment for some residents of Ogoja in
Cross River state when three of their neighbours and landlord drowned respectively
in a well located inside their compound as they tried to retrieve a bucket
which fell into the well. Some of their neighbours have said it’s spiritual and
they believe a force was behind it. The story;
One after another, four men entered a water well and drowned
while trying to retrieve a bucket when the string cut letting the bucket to
sink to the bottom of the well. The incident, which happened along Ogoja Road, Ikom in the
Central Senatorial District of Cross River State, attracted sympathisers some
of them attributing the tragedy to a spiritual force.
The first person to enter the well, John Ushie, according to
a resident of the compound who gave her name as Janet, was preparing to go
to work
that morning and wanted to take his bath. Ushie decided to fetch water
from the well but the string with which the bucket he was drawing the water
fell inside the well. When the string gave way, he decided to retrieve it by
jumping into the well but ended up gulping water and drowned.
His brother, Boniface, who had left the house for his shop at the Ikom Main Market, was alerted
on phone what had happened. He rushed down on Okada and jumped into the well to
rescue his brother but also downed in the process.
When Boniface could not come out, another neighbour jumped
in to try to rescue the two brothers inside the well. He too drowned.
According to Janet, when the landlord of the compound, Eyung
Ebam, saw what had happened, he jumped into the well to rescue the drowned men and
he too drowned. “It was at this point that nobody was willing to get into the
well and the National Drug Law Enforcement, NDLEA, officials who were mounting
a road block close to the house called the Fire Service and they arrived soon
”, the eye witness told Sunday Vanguard.
She explained that when the Fire Service men arrived, one of
them jumped into the well with a rope with which he tied the landlord who was
the last person to drown in order to pull him out. “He tied the rope around his
chest region and gradually his colleagues dragged him out but when he got close
to the point they wanted to grab him and pull him out, the rope slipped and he
went down again hitting the others inside which may have eventually killed
everyone inside,” the neighbour said.
The four bodies were pulled out by the Fire Service men and
taken to County Hospital, Ikom Four Corners and the victims confirmed dead by
Dr. Ukwam, the medical doctor, there. An official of the Cross River State Fire
Service, Ikom, Mt Linus Ework, said he
got a distress call at about 7 am and he
and his men rushed to the scene to rescue the victims but “it was unfortunate
that it was a little too late as three of them were pulled out dead”.
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