17/08/2022
A Lagos businessman has gone missing in Onitsha Anambra state.
According to the wife, the children are asking, "where's daddy?"
Emmanuel Eze, a father of three from Ohabuenyi village, Okposi Okwu community in Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, resident in Lagos State with his family, was upbeat that his business trip to Onitsha, Anambra State, on June 4, 2022, would be a successful outing.
In fact, he had promised his wife that he would reveal the nature of the business to her once he returned from the journey.
However, that was not to be, as Daily Sun gathered that, six weeks after, the 35-year-old businessman was yet to return to his base in Lagos and his whereabouts remain unknown. Eze’s two mobile phone lines have remained switched off since the second day of his journey, with no clue of what might have happened to him.
His elder brother, Ogbonnaya Eze, a lecturer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), told our reporter that his sudden disappearance has thrown their family into confusion.
He said his brother went on a business trip from Lagos to Onitsha and was last heard from the next morning, when he was scheduled to meet a friend in Enugu State.
Ogbonnaya explained that his missing brother was into foodstuff business in Lagos and had always sourced goods from the northern part of the country. He wondered the kind of business that brought him down to Onitsha that he did not confide in any members of the family, including his wife.
Ogbonnaya said: “My brother, Emmanuel Eze, came to Onitsha from Lagos for business on June 4. He spoke with his wife in the morning of the following day. He said he had lodged in a hotel in Onitsha. He also called his friend in Enugu and informed him that the business he came to do in Onitsha was not successful. He also said he was leaving the hotel to go down to Enugu to meet his friend, one Onwe Samuel. That was the last time anybody saw or heard from him.
“We reported the matter to both Enugu and Anambra police commands and we have searched for him in all police and army detention facilities in and around Onitsha, without any trace of him.
“Samuel, the friend he was supposed to meet in Enugu, confirmed that he called him and said that he would be coming down to Enugu to see him but he did not visit again as he said. Samuel also confirmed that it was in the morning that he called him, and when he did not see him in the evening he tried his lines but they were all switched off.”
Daily Sun gathered from a family source that investigation by security experts indicated that his two telephone lines went off at the same time between Asaba and Benin-Lagos road on June 5, 2022.
Ogbonnaya appealed to the public to contact the family or the police with any information regarding his brother’s whereabouts and how to rescue him. He said the entire family was traumatized, and his wife, who is pregnant with their fourth child, has been having sleepless nights since the incident.
On her part, wife of the missing man, Mrs. Blessing Emmanuel, said her husband only told her that he would be going to Onitsha for business but did not disclose the nature of the business.
“He told me a day before the trip that he would be going to Onitsha for business. I was surprised and immediately I asked him what kind of business he was going to Onitsha to do, knowing full well that the foodstuffs he sells were usually sourced from the North. But, to my greatest surprise, he answered that he would tell me once he returned from the trip.
