Angel Okah, 11-year-old daughter of jailed leader of Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), scared by reports that her father was allegedly being kept under harsh prison condition recently jolted her mother with a question she least expected. “Is my Daddy going to die in prison?”, the little girl asked.
Taken aback, her mother, Azuka Okah, determined not to worsen an already disheartening situation, assured her that her beloved father would come home someday. Mrs Okah told Sunday Sun in a telephone interview from their South African home, that baby Angel has also been having re-current nightmares suspected to have risen from a raid on their home by South African law enforcement agents in 2010.
Mrs Okah whose youngest child would be ten years in June, said 11-year-old Angel had been having nightmares. “Angel has recurrent nightmares. This time in school in broad day, she screamed that people in black, with guns, were coming to take her. I guess it was due to the attack on my house when they came for my husband in 2010. They came around 3am. For me, it (nightmare) is likely from that incident.
“The other day, she asked me, ‘Is my daddy going to die in prison?’ and I said, “No, God has a plan that he will come home.” On whether she would re-consider her marriage to Henry Okah, Azuka said that the tough challenges of her husband’s incarceration were not strong enough to make her dump him. “W-h-a-t? Me, dump Henry? Never! I believe in Henry forever”, she said, even as she urged the Nigerian government to move for his release.
The mother of four said she would never give up on the man she loves so much. Azuka who said she is one year younger than her embattled husband, told Sunday Sun that her unalloyed trust in God has sustained her and the children. “I have been praying. That is where my strength lies”, she said. She complained that Henry Okah was being moved from one prison to the other but currently at the Kockstad prisons that she described as, “ultra maximum prisons” and under harsh condition that has worsened his health challenges.
“They keep transferring him from one prison to the other. The prison where he is now, Kockstad, is ultra maximum. They transferred him on a Thursday, and when I got wind of it, I went there on April 1 and he was already very skinny. He had not been allowed to have a bath. That got me worried, because they lock him up most of the time. “Even if you must lock up a man for 22 out of 24 hours, he should be allowed to have a bath.
Where he is, takes hours of driving to get there. It is very far from home. I suspect it is to keep him off from his lawyer and family. It has really made it difficult for us to see him. “He cannot even telephone because he has only two hours phoning in a month. I have only spoken for less than five minutes with him. He also has eye problems and the prisons are aware but they would not allow him go for treatment even though we had paid for all that”, Azuka said.
She stated that she had lodged complaints about her husband’s maltreatment to the prisons authorities through her lawyers. Looking back, Mrs Okah faulted her husband’s trial, describing it as “one-sided”, because there was no witness from the defence side and Henry could not mount the witness box even as sworn affidavits sent by his witnesses who could not come to court, were allegedly rejected.
“So, for me, it was really an unfair trial because Henry’s version was not heard. It was a one-sided thing. I don’t see Henry as a monster. If you go through the judgment, you will notice the faults. But I just thank God, Henry is alive. So long as there is life, there is hope. I’ll keep praying. God can do anything. It calls for absolute trust on God for me because I can’t look anywhere else than God”, she stated. On MEND’s threat to resume violence in protest of Okah’s imprisonment, Azuka told Sunday Sun: I am not MEND.
I prefer to be known as Henry’s wife. But I don’t support bloodletting. I hate bloodshed of any kind.” Similarly, she would not comment on the untoward remarks made by some individuals including ex-militant leader, Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo, after her husband’s conviction. “I’ve actually resolved not to pay attention to all that. I will leave Asari to his own stuff and opinion. I am not going to worry about him.
I’d rather worry about important things”, she said. Azuka debunked alleged information by Asari that she is an Itsekiri, stressing that she is from Enugu State, and could not come home to see her father who had taken ill twice. Appreciating the love shown her by her in-laws, she told Sunday Sun that Henry’s younger brother, Charles, was allegedly being punished for being loyal to him, by campaigning for his (Henry) release.
She insisted that there were others who were also facing the same ordeal for their relationship with her husband. “It’s so sad that some families have been destroyed because of their association with Henry”, she said. Although she has not been in contact with any one in government in Nigeria, Mrs Okah appealed to Nigeria’s Federal Government to prevail on South African authorities to set her husband free.
“Get Henry free if you can, and you will not regret it. More than anything else, he is a man they (Nigeria) need.” Also, she appealed to Nigerians to keep praying for Henry whom she said, is “absolutely not a monster”, but “a man with a heart and a resolve that I want God to use.”
Culled from The Sun
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