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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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