Gunmen believed to be working for political actors have attacked and shot dead Madam Edith Okoroafor, the mother of a top lawyer of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Barrister Richard Okoroafor, in Ekiti State.
On Tuesday that Madam Edith was returning from a church vigil and was only five minutes from her residence in Ekiti State when she was ambushed and gunned down.
The IPOB lawyer’s mother was killed last Wednesday.
“Her assailants hid by the corner of her house waiting for her to return from a vigil. At about five minutes’ walk to her house, they shot her dead and escaped. He only sent me a short notice of her interment but hid how she was slain,” a source revealed.
“With grief in my heart but with total submission to God, I formally announce the death of my mother, who died on Wednesday. We shall be burying her in her hometown, Ekerawen in Agharho, Delta State, on Saturday,” the lawyer said in the notice.
In the third week of February, there was an assassination attempt on Okoroafor’s life.
The IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, had accused the Nigerian Army of attempting to assassinate Okoroafor.
Kanu had disclosed that Okoroafor was ambushed by men who came out of a white Hilux truck on Suleja-Bida highway on Thursday and opened fire on his car.
Okoroafor, a legal counsel for IPOB, was leaving Alpha Military Commando Base in Suleja where he had gone to confirm an intelligence report regarding some Biafran agitators detained by the Nigerian Army, when he was attacked.
Okoroafor was instrumental to the release of Obigbo women who were secretly abducted and taken to Abuja by the Nigerian Army in Rivers State in November and December 2020.
He had also dragged the former Chief of the Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai (retd.) to the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands, over allegations of war crimes and extrajudicial killings in the military.
