Pathetic: How robbers plucked out my eyes for frustrating their operation

Mr. Isaac Nwabude, a former lorry driver, said robbers plucked his
eyes, as punishment for daring to run over their barricade and thereby
frustrating their operations.

Narrating his ordeal, Mr. Isaac, of Urunnebo Village, Enugwu-Ukwu, in
Njikoka Local Government Area in Anambra State, said that the day the
incident happened in 1992 as he was travelling from Jos, in Plateau
State, to Onitsha, in Anambra State, with goods and passengers in his
Mercedes Benz lorry when they ran into a roadblock mounted by armed
robbers, in the night, at Opi Junction, in Nsukka area of Enugu State.
That encounter rendered him blind and has incapacitated his life. On
what happened, he said: "At Opi Junction, we ran into a gang of armed
robbers, who mounted road block on the way and I had no alternative
but to stop because the road block was high and I could not run over
it. They opened fire on us and killed four of my passengers, who were
owners of the tomatoes I was carrying in the vehicle and inflicted
injury on some others.
"The rest of us who were alive and conscious, jumped down from the
vehicle and were ordered to lie face down on the road and we did."
Nwabude said that when the robbers discovered that he was the driver
of the vehicle, they told him that they would deal with him because he
had earlier run over their road block in one of their operations at
Ankpa, in Benue State and thereby frustrating their operations.
"When they said that, I concluded that they would either kill me
outright or shoot me on the leg or somewhere else to give me permanent
disability," he stated. According to the driver, the robbers tied his
hands and legs with the rope they got from his vehicle, and used their
sharp knife to pluck his two eyes and left him to his fate. Nwabude
said that other drivers came to his rescue when the robbers had gone
and took him to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu.
Since he was discharged from the hospital, he has been going to UNTH
on monthly basis for check-up, where doctors wash the artificial eyes
they fixed in his eye socket as well as give him drugs to reduce pain
and forestall infection. Nwabude's tale continues after the robbery,
when his wife, who got traumatised by what happened, developed
hypertension and died. He said: "My wife developed hypertension and
was taken to the hospital. The next information I received was that my
wife was dead.
Her death compounded my problems, as I was left with our four children
to cater for, when I am blind and did not have any means of
livelihood." Nwabude said that a priest later assisted him by getting
families who took in two of his four children. Unfortunately, one of
the two kids died in Lagos, while the other one is still living with
the family. The blind man said he was once given a paper to the
Ministry of Women Affairs to seek employment, but regretted that after
several visits, nothing positive came out of it.
"Although I appreciate so much the assistance being given to me and my
children by good spirited people, I want the government to help me in
any way, so that I will be able to feed my children and give them good
education," he declared.
Source: sunnewsonline.com