Mystery man linked to death of 38 local gin drinkers in Rivers

Shocking revelations have emerged on the deaths of  38 residents of Woji and other communities in Obio/Akpo, Local Government Areas, Rivers State, 24-72 hours after drinking suspected toxic locally brewed gin, popularly known as Kai Kai at a dog meat joint .

Proprietor of dog meat joint, Mr. Friday Dickson, has strongly denied claims that,he laced the delicacy with killer- seasoning.This comes after irate youths raised down his restaurant ..

Speaking to Niger Delta Voice at the Woji Police Divisional Headquarters, where he is under custody,Dickson, who has been in the business for over a decade, recalled that a man called Chikobi and Chiefo brought the local gin to his restaurant that Sunday allegedly to celebrate his new chieftaincy title.Curiously, the celebrant did not drink the gin he brought.He said

  “I have been in this community doing this job and I did not kill anybody. That Sunday, I was inside my restaurant busy with other things I do not know what happened outside. “I only heard that one man that use to come to my restaurant, he is from Yoruba, brought kai kai for all the people there to drink. Me I do not know anything about it.” “I used all the ingredients that I have been using since my 10 years in Woji. I do not know the man who brought the drink. But I think they use to call him Chikobi and Chiefo, if I see him, I can recognise him but I do not know where he lives.”

 The wife of one of the victims corroborated Dickson’s story. The mysterious Chikobi, said to be a Yoruba man from Ogun state, is on the run after the episode .There is also a puzzle on how the killer-gin got to Bonny and Gokhana local governments. Chikobi came to Woji but there is no information on who took the gin to aforementioned two local governments.

Except he left Woji for the Bonny and Gokhana after the “celebration of death” or they were other merchants of death.

Investigation by Niger Delta Voice revealed that many of the victims expired wrestling with death, vomiting and complaining of abdominal pain. Some lost their vision, cried of chest and waist pains.

Niger Delta Voice witnessed the death of a victim, Mr. Jarry, who passed away inside a tricycle that was conveying him home. The poison apparently reacted at the point, as he started struggling with unseen forces at the back seat of the Keke NAPEP. The panic-stricken tricycle driver took to his heels. Our reporter saw him go to meet his Maker.

Akpan left church to dine with the devil.

The death of Engr Joseph Akpan is pathetic. He left a Church service on the ill-fated Sunday against the counsel of his wife and a church member to partake in the drink at the dog meat joint. Moreover, after the drinking spree, he refused to confess to his apprehensive wife, a nurse, for possible medical assistance.

His bereaved wife, Mrs. Pauline Apkan,

 “On Monday, I was called that a man is dying within Mini-Woji and that the person drank kai kai. When I got there, I told the people to take him to the hospital that I cannot handle such case and my husband was having pity for the man the way he was shouting and rolling on the floor. Later the man died.

“I remembered that on Sunday, somebody called my husband while we were in the church and he left me in the church to honour the call. A man close to him in the church asked him to wait until after service then he can go and answer the call, but he refused. Maybe they told him they want to start.Earlier on Friday, he told me that there is a man they gave chieftaincy title in his community and he is coming to that restaurant to celebrate it. 

I told him that he should not go that I do not like him going to that restaurant often, but he started shouting at me, that is it because he told me? I said the man may poison him, he said do I think the man will bring poison to all the people there,” Mrs. Akpan asserted. “So when the issue of that his friend, Fabian, that just died and other three people came up and all relating to the people that went to the bar, I asked him to tell me the truth if he went to that bar to drink, but he denied and said he only went there to charge his phone.”

She continued,

“Later, one man came and told me to look for an antidote for my husband that he met my husband drinking at that restaurant on Sunday. On Tuesday morning, he woke up saying that he cannot see again. I said but it is daybreak, he continued shouting that he cannot see.

“Soon, he said his waist and chest. That his chest is very hot I called my pastor he said I should pray for him. He started rolling and groaning, then he died in my hands. “The poison is not from the dog meat, it is that kai kai they drank. Some people who came here said people who bought only dog meat are not dying that it is only those who drank the kai kai,” she added.

Culled from Vanguard