UKIM ITA, ODUKPANI – For Basseyanwan Okon Bassey, the memory of her father’s voice still rings clear. On a Sunday morning last month, as she was packing luggage to visit her daughter in school, her father, Okon Bassey Okon Ansa, called her by his fond nickname for her: “Mma Teacher.”
He complained of waist pain and said his medications had finished. She quickly arranged for pain relief medicine and food items for him before travelling. It was the last time she would see him alive.
Days later, after returning from her trip, Basseyanwan heard rumours of a murder in the community. The following day, she went to check on her father.
“When I got to his house, the door was open and the room was very disorganized, with water all over the floor, blood on the walls, and other disturbing signs,” she recounted.
She immediately raised the alarm, and a search began.
What the community discovered in the suspect’s compound in Otu Idim – shallow graves disguised with plantain and pineapple suckers – would shatter Basseyanwan’s world forever.
“Seeing my father’s lifeless body dismantled into pieces made me faint several times,” she said, her voice heavy with grief. “I was not myself. That day, I fainted several times.”
Her father’s head and body were found buried separately. The head had been placed in one grave, covered with ants; the body in another, planted with a plantain sucker as a disguise. The head, already decomposing, was later brought to the mortuary alongside the body.
The suspect, Akaniyene Ignatius Eshiet, a 30‑year‑old from Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area in Akwa Ibom State, is alleged to have murdered two persons – her father and another victim, Okokon Akpan Eshiet – and reportedly confessed to killing 30 people in total. He and his girlfriend, Uduak Essien, have been arrested.
Basseyanwan’s ordeal did not end with the discovery. When she entered the suspect’s house, she found chilling evidence that the suspect had been fixated on her family.
“We found pictures of my dad and some of my wedding portraits in his house, together with the cap he wore on my marriage ceremony, as well as items allegedly stolen by the suspect, including the music player belonging to the other victim,” she said.
Her father had told her of threats made by the suspect. One day, he caught the suspect and his girlfriend making love in his backyard and condemned the act. The suspect then threatened him. Another time, the suspect’s girlfriend, who had separated from her husband, kept her luggage in her father’s compound, and when the man found out, he became bitter and asked her to move her properties.
“All these indicate that the duo got back at my father by killing him,” Basseyanwan said.
She also dismissed claims that the suspect was avenging his parents’ deaths – a reason he reportedly gave during interrogation.
“His father died a natural death at a time when I was still very young. His mother left this community and returned to their state, and I cannot tell if she is still alive or dead, but none of their whereabouts is linked to my father, to the best of my knowledge,” she stated.
Her father, she noted, was not a stranger but an indigene of Ukim Ita from Ufok Eyo Ndem. She had been planning to visit him more frequently. Now, she is left with memories – his voice, his fond nickname for her, and the haunting image of his dismembered remains.
“Finally, I ask the government to intervene,” she pleaded.
As of the time of this report, police investigations are ongoing, and the suspect, and his girlfriend, remain in custody. However, his brother who escaped the crime scene with a gun is still at large. The community, once forced to abandon their ancestral homes, now lives in fear that if the suspect returns, “he would continue from where he stopped.”
For Basseyanwan, the pain is personal and profound. “The child who is orphaned is the only one who understands the real pain of losing a parent,” a community elder had said. She now knows that pain all too well.
