Where is Citizen Emeka Benjamin Uche, a Lagos factory worker? That was the big question yesterday as his wife, Ruth, 34, from Abia State broke the news of his disappearance since February. Uche, 39, fled home when he learnt that his expectant wife was carrying a set of twins – the family’s third.
Mrs Uche was at the Lagos State Secretariat, Alausa yesterday with her six children, pleading for help. Not many knew what she wanted as she stood under a tree, close to the Press Centre, carrying the babies. Her first two sets of twins, much older, stood close to their mother, and did not in any way seem intimidated by the sea of cameras and faces focusing on them.
Mrs. Uche was receptive when a reporter from The Nation approached her to narrate her ordeal.
In 2009 when she first conceived, she was delivered of two girls – Goodness and Godnews. The second conception, two years later, produced another two – a boy and a girl, named John and Joyce.
But when her husband, Emeka, learnt that the third pregnancy was another set of two he fled their number 32, Awori Street, Agege home on the outskirt of Lagos to an undisclosed location in Ikorodu, Lagos.
The third set of twins arrived last month. They were named Daniel and Daniella.
Mrs. Uche said she could no longer cope with widening needs for food, clothes, drugs and school fees.
Her meagre earnings as a teacher in a private school in Lagos can no longer meet their needs.
Her story: “I met my husband in 2002 but we got married in 2008. We met in the village at Umuahia. I don’t want to leave the children and run away. This is why I want government to help us,” she said.
She recalled that she never wanted the third pregnancy, but her use of traditional means of family planning (counting fertile and infertile days) failed her.
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