Sunday, October 5, 2014

Synagogue: My children and I need help, cries widow


Synagogue: My children and I need help, cries widow
SOS The widow of one of the victims of the September 12 disaster at the Synagogue Church says it has become pretty difficult taking care of the berieved family
Twenty-one days after the collapsed of the guest house of the Synagogue Church of All Nations at Ikotun, Lagos, a woman, whose husband was among the 115 victims, has implored the state and Federal Governments to come to her aid. The widow, Mrs Esther Kukoyi, a mother of four, said that her husband, Mr Sunday Kukoyi, a carpenter, died when he went to the guest house to collect money for the work he had done. Mrs Kukoyi, whose last child is just seven-months-old, said she was a full time housewife and needed financial assistance from the government or well-meaning Nigerians to take care of her children.
The widow recollected how happy they had been after her husband received a call, asking him to come and carry out carpentry work in the guest house. She never knew that would be the last job the man would ever do. Although the family badly needed any penny coming through the husband’s work, she said she now wished the job offer, which later turned fatal, had never come.
The woman added that the deceased was even through with the job, but only went over to collect his payment when he met his death. She said: “After working there on Thursday, he was not paid. He was, however, asked to come back the following day, Friday, to collect his money. I waited throughout that Friday for his return.

I called his phone several times, but the line was switched off. I kept trying his line until midnight. “I called his extended family members but they said I should go to bed that he would come home. They said he could have been held up in traffic jam.” Mrs. Kukoyi said that on Saturday morning, she went to the church. When she got to the place, she saw a lot of people. It was then she realised that the guest house where Mr. Kukoyi told her he worked and gone to collect money, had crumpled like a pack of cards.
She said her husband was among the dead. While she mourned her husband, she also worried over how to take care of the four kids, especially since she is a full time housewife and had no educational qualification. She said: “We urge the authorities to allow us to take his body, so that his children will know where he is buried. His kids need to know his gravesite. He was their father. “My second child has been asking me the whereabouts of his father. I can’t still believe it. My husband was a young man.
His parents are still alive.” NT met Mrs. Kukoyi at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), where the state government has asked family members of people who died in the incident, to submit blood samples which would aid forensic identification and DNA analysis of the bodies. She said: “My husband’s death is painful. He was not sick and wasn’t even looking for miracle. Our daily bread was what he went to source for. Let the Federal and state governments, including wellmeaning Nigerians, come to our aid. All my children are still in primary school. I urgently need support.”
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