…victim paralysed, unconscious

The Edo State Migration Agency has rescued 27-year-old Godstime Uwoghiren who was allegedly poisoned by his friends for buying a motorbike in Burkina Faso.

Uwoghiren touched ground at the Benin Airport on Wednesday at about 1:00pm alongside the Director-General of the agency, Lucky Agazuma and other staff, paralysed and unconscious.

The victim was hurriedly picked up by a waiting ambulance and rushed to the Edo Specialist Hospital, Benin, for emergency medical attention.

Addressing journalists at the airport, the agency DG said the state government was informed of an Edo indigene that was poisoned by his friends for envy of buying a motorbike in Burkina Faso, stressing that Governor Monday Okpehbolo immediately directed the agency to repatriate the victim.

Agazuma lamented that all efforts to get necessary information about the victim were frustrated by his immediate family, saying “after a good four months, our efforts yielded results and here we are with Godstime.”

He added: “When they reached out to Mr. Governor that Mr. Godstime is sick, paralysed, and that he was poisoned in Burkina Faso for the fact that he bought a bike, the only contact person we were given was his sister. We asked her to lead us to the family but she refused for good four months. Today, she is crying profusely. We are taking her to our office for further investigation.

“And to our surprise, at the early stage of this rescue mission, the family rejected, but Governor Okpehbolo insisted that we must go and rescue him, and we succeeded,”  he said.

Agazuma, who thanked the governor for providing all the necessary resources needed, stated: “Governor Monday Okpehbolo is not for provision of infrastructure alone, he is concerned about humanity, this he has been exhibiting.”

He urged parents to warn their children that “not all the glitters is gold,” adding “many Nigerians are suffering over there.”

Mother of the victim, Mrs. Susan Uwoghiren, while thanking Okpehbolo for coming to the victim’s rescue, narrated: “He came to Benin from the village to learn how to drive truck, but suddenly he called his father that we was traveling out, we asked him how, he said we shouldn’t worry, the next time we heard from him was when he called that he was in Burkina Faso. We were talking regulularly not until recently that we didn’t hear from him, and when we carried out our investigation, we were told he was seriously sick, so I told my pastor about it and we started praying. Thank God he is back.”