In what will come across as a rather startling development, an 84-year-old man, Maxwell Akuwuodor, has allegedly rendered a widow, Mrs Rosena Akuwuodor, and her four children homeless.
A The PUNCH correspondent, who visited the scene of the incident at Umuokoji Umuorii Uratta in the Owerri North Local Government Area of Imo State on Wednesday, saw the woman and her children crying.
The widow alleged that her brother-in-law came with thugs and some men in uniform on Tuesday to evict them from the house.
The 49-year-old woman told our correspondent that her husband, Reginald Akuwuodor, died on September 9, 2020, and was buried on November 20, 2020.
Rosena, who spoke amid tears, said her brother-in-law threw her belongings out of the house with the help of the thugs and locked the gate.
She said, “My husband’s only surviving brother, Maxwell Akuwuodor, evicted me and my four children from my husband’s house on Tuesday. He threw out our loads and locked the house. This was a house built by my husband. He said he had obtained judgment against my husband, which is not true.
“As I speak with you, I am homeless. We have not eaten since yesterday. We have no place to go. We have neither taken our bath nor changed our clothes. The world should come to my rescue. I am a poor widow with three girls and a boy.
“He threw away everything that belongs to us inside a house built by my husband, including the credentials of my children. The house is a five-bedroom bungalow.”
Her brother-in-law, Maxwell, told our correspondent in a telephone conversation that the eviction was carried out by staff of the Owerri High Court.
He explained that he got a judgment against the widow’s husband on a matter of rightful ownership of the ancestral land.
But counsel for the widow, Uche Ubochi, said the court ruling was wrongly executed.
Ubochi said the court didn’t say that the widow and her children should be evicted from her husband’s house.
He noted that the judgment permitted Maxwell to take over another house said to have been built by his father (widow’s father-in-law).
The lawyer said he would file a motion in court against the court bailiff for wrongful execution.
