- On April 12, 2025, 63-year-old shoemaker Chikadibia Sunday and his daughters, Glory, Ngozi, and Ogechi, were arrested during a midnight raid on their Alaukwu Village home by armed men from the Abia State Police Command’s Anti-Kidnapping Unit.
Mrs. Chioma Chikadibia has died after months of battling depression and illness linked to the continued detention of her husband and three daughters by the Abia State Police Command.
Her surviving daughter, Chikiezie Ifeoma Lilian, confirmed to SaharaReporters that she passed away on Friday, August 8, 2025.
“I lost my mom on Friday 8 of August 2025. She died out of depression and other stuff over the continual detention of her husband (my father) and her three daughters by the police,” she said.
On April 12, 2025, 63-year-old shoemaker Chikadibia Sunday and his daughters, Glory, Ngozi, and Ogechi, were arrested during a midnight raid on their Alaukwu Village home by armed men from the Abia State Police Command’s Anti-Kidnapping Unit.
Eyewitnesses said the officers, some in plain clothes, broke down doors, seized valuables, and took the family away without a warrant. Police initially denied the arrests, but it was later revealed the family had been secretly arraigned and remanded at Aba Correctional Centre without notifying relatives or granting legal access.
In May, Mrs. Chioma told SaharaReporters her husband’s health was deteriorating in custody, their businesses had collapsed, and her youngest daughter, Ogechi, had missed final-year exams at IMT Enugu, risking an extra year in school.
“My husband is slimming down daily. Life has not been easy on me coupled with my ill health,” she had said then.
“I used to have high blood pressure but after that incident, it increased without measure. My children’s dreams have been scattered. Their customers and businesses have been liquidated. This detention has created much vacuum in the family.”
Relatives say the lack of police or government intervention despite public outcry drove Mrs. Chioma into deep depression.
The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) condemned the arrests as a “gross abuse of police power,” with its Executive Director, Okechukwu Nwanguma, urging the Inspector-General of Police and the Abia State Commissioner of Police to investigate and free the detainees.
“This case reflects the very worst of police impunity — armed men storming a home without a warrant, abducting an entire family, denying them access to lawyers or relatives, and hiding them from public view,” Nwanguma had said.
In May, SaharaReporters revealed that police secretly arraigned Chikadibia Sunday and his daughters, Ngozi, Ogechi, and Glory, after holding them incommunicado for weeks at the Anti-Kidnapping Unit in Umuahia, without their chosen legal representation or family access.
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