Says our father left home for two months, he has not returned

By Ozioruva Aliu

The family members of Awunor from Ubulu Uku in Aniocha South Local Government Area of Delta State but resident in Benin City, Edo State have cried out to the police and security agencies to help find their breadwinner, Godspower Awunor who left home over two months ago and has not returned with his line switched off and his whereabouts unknown.

The missing 60-year-old Awunor was said to have left home on August 4th with the intention of going to look for work and has not returned.

Narrating the development to Saturday Vanguard in between sobs, his distraught wife, Beatrice Awunor, an Urhobo by tribe said she could not understand the mystery behind the disappearance of her husband.

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She said “On the 4th of August at about 2 pm, I was in the market when my husband called me and the place he was, was noisy and when I asked where he was, he said one of his friends came to call him and they were going out to look for a job. While I was trying to know who that friend was, the phone was disconnected so I didn’t call back. When I got home around 7 pm, I met my children who told me their father left home in the afternoon and hadn’t returned.

The last born (Kelvin) said their father didn’t tell them where he was going. I asked who came to the house and they said nobody came to the house to see him. I now decided to call his telephone line but the number was switched off. I became surprised because his number was always on. I waited for 30 minutes and called the number again, it was still switched off and throughout that night till daybreak, the line was switched off and it has been like that till now.”

She said “after two days, we now went to make a report at the police station, they took our statement and then radioed other stations around to know if he was arrested but there was no positive response. After two weeks and nothing happened, I had to travel home to inform his people. After a while, police said we needed to go to his telephone line service provider to track his phone number and from the information they got, police said somebody called him around 8 am on that fateful day 4th of August and the man was in their custody.

But the man said he only called him for a business transaction they did before their company was shut down and that he had not been paid. He was the one in their custody. Thereafter from their tracking, the police said he later called one of his brothers in Aba and that he was around Oluku from the tracking as at the time he called me.”

His job

“Their kind of job which was hiring and driving caterpillars sometimes could take them away from home for weeks and months but since their company closed down for almost a year he had not been working so I was even happy that day when he told me somebody called him for work. About eight years ago their employer gave some of the lands as a gift; many have been able to build their houses but my husband has not been able to build his own before they were disengaged.

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One day, our son called me that he heard his dad talking about the land on the phone and that it seemed he wanted to sell the land. I was angry with him and tried to discourage him from selling the land and I begged him not to sell the land. In less than three weeks, the boy told me that his dad was looking for the land document and I felt very bad.

It was when we were searching for the house that I found the paper he used to sell the land for N850, 000. We don’t know the bank he uses, we don’t know where he keeps his money nor has access to his ATM card. When he sold the land, he said he wanted to buy a car for commercial transport but he was yet to buy the car when the country was locked down because of Covid-19. He said he would go and buy the vehicle from Osun state and after the inter-state lockdown was lifted, I reminded him about the vehicle but he kept postponing it before he disappeared.”

His absence

“Ever since he left the house, we have been feeling his absence and there is a vacuum. The children’s school fees are there to be paid and our house rent has expired and we have not been able to pay so I don’t know where I am going to start from.”

Vanguard