Adichie Nwosu

2011

Enugu

In 2011, twenty-one year old Adichie Nwosu traveled down to Enugu to help his younger sister who was trying to gain admission into the university, with some of the processes. That night, he stepped out to attend a party, and did not return. 

His cousin, Chisom Okafor whom he was supposed to have been staying with during his stay in Enugu, could not reach him on the phone. Neither could his parents. After days of futile calling, they declared him missing. They posted his pictures all over social media, with details such as height, what he had been wearing and where he was last seen. 

About two weeks later, someone reached out to the family to say he knew where Adichie was and what had happened to him: he had been shot dead by SARS. The family traced the SARS office from this information. The officers confirmed the information to be true. They branded him an armed robber, even though everyone who knew Adichie knew that that was a lie. 

They also refused to release the body to the family, saying that it now belonged to the State. Adichie’s family had to go to court to secure the right to collect and bury their own child. They found that he had been shot multiple times and in multiple places.

“The family never remained the same after that,” says his cousin, Chisom Okafor. “Adichie was the only son as well as the first child. He was a favourite.”

Adichie was very lively and social. He was a student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. 

The hardest part of these stories and which no one ever talks about is the trauma of having to live with the damaged, even if false, memory of the deceased person as a criminal, says Chisom. “How many people could we possibly explain to that it couldn’t have been true?” he asks.