Wife Remanded In Prison For Stabbing Husband To Death Due His Unability to Stop Playing Baba Ijebu

A Lagos High Court sitting in Ikeja, on Monday, ordered the remand of a 29-year-old housewife, Onyinyechukwu Akunne, for "stabbing" her 35-year-old husband, Mr. Abuch Akunne, to death.

The wife, who was arraigned before Justice Josephine Oyefeso, on one count of murder, contrary to Section 221 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The prosecutor, Mrs. C. k. Tunji-Carena, said the defendant stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife in the chest on March 28, 2015, on Idimu Road, Ejigbo, Lagos State.

In a confessional statement, which the police claimed that she voluntarily made, Akunne said she was from the Ukpor area of Anambra State and had been married to the deceased since 2012.

The marriage, she said, was blessed with a four-year-old female child.

She explained that trouble started on March 28, 2015, after an argument broke out between her and her late husband over the husband’s alleged gambling habit.

“He used to lose huge sums of money to Baba Ijebu and I warned him to desist from playing the game,” Akunne said.

She added that on the day of the incident, her husband, after losing money to the game, came home in anger and picked a fight with her.

“He came home angry after losing to Baba Ijebu. I told him to stop wasting money on it. When I asked him why he refused to stop playing the game, he started slapping and beating me.

“He picked the kitchen knife that I was using to slice okra and we both struggled for the knife, while he kept screaming that he would kill me.

‘‘At a point, I pushed the knife right into his chest and he fell,’’ Akunne said.

Justice Oyefeso adjourned further proceedings in the matter till March 6, 2017.

The judge ordered the wife be remanded in the prison.