Ikechukwu Ndigwe, a Morocco-based Nigerian businessman desperately seeking for help to recover what is left of his once-thriving family and rebuild his shattered life, is now seriously considering legal showdown with the Italian authorities over the custody of his surviving two children.
Orient Weekend reports that Mr. Ndigwe, a native of Nnukwu village in Adazinnukwu in Anaocha local government area of Anambra state, lost his wife, Joy, and first son, Gozie Samuel, during a dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea on September 5, 2016 from Morocco to Italy. Nearly two years after the tragic incident, he is still battling hard to recover his two surviving children – Tochukwu Mathew and Ebubechukwu David – who were lucky to survive the tragic voyage and had remained in the custody of an Italian – Ms. Malandrino Maria Paula, in Siracusa, a town 30km from Catania in Italy.
According to the embattled father of three, who was incarcerated in Moroccan prison when the tragedy befell his family, efforts to secure Italian visa for a trip to Italy to reunite with the remainder of his family, in the form of the two survivor children, has been fraught with frustrating legal quagmires.
Ikechukwu told newsmen in Onitsha that the rejection of his visa application and request to repatriate his kids was flimsy, baseless and without substance, insisting that he should be allowed to “enter Italy and see my children.”
He said that he met his late wife, a Nigerian from Benin City in Edo state, in Morocco, married her and that the marriage yielded three children. According to him, all was going well for the family until he was jailed by Moroccan authorities late July 2014. He told newsmen that his late wife and children used to visit him in prison until they joined other desperate migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.
“I remember there was a time she told me that she would be relocating to Italy. I objected to the idea, telling her to either stay back in Morocco with my children or go back to Nigeria pending when I would finish my prison term. By then, it was just six months for me to come out.
“However, for some time, I did not hear from her again and I suspected that something may have happened until the news came that she, with the kids, was heading to Italy through the Mediterranean Sea when their boat developed problem and capsized off the Libyan coast. The corpse of my wife was found but that of my first son was not. Her corpse, till this day, remains in the custody of the Italian government.
According to him, all his efforts to recover his lost kids had been frustrated by legal encumbrances. Hear him: “When this incident happened, I told my elder sister, Mrs Obiageli Ebilite to get my lawyer, Barrister A. M. Egbesons based in Onitsha, to write the Nigerian embassy in Italy, Italian government and Italian embassy in Lagos. He was to remind them that the surviving kids still had their biological father alive and that they should hand the kids over to them as closest relations.
“The Italian tribunal that entertains minor cases which was presided over by Dottoressa Pricoco Francisco, in Catania, kept my two kids in the Home Department, in the care of a guardian, Mrs Malandrino Maria Paula. The tribunal order was that the kids be handed over to their relations on the ground that they will show proof that they are financially buoyant to take care of them which the couple did but the Italian embassy in Lagos failed to grant my request for entry permit into Italy.
“When I came out of prison I continued from where my sister stopped, demanding to be issued with an Italian visa to go and reunite with my children and arrange to bring them back to Nigeria. That condition of being financially buoyant will not be extended to me as the biological father even if I am assumed to be (financially) unfit. Consequently, we wrote the Italian government, appealing for reversal of the refusal by its embassy in Lagos to issue me visa to travel to Italy to see my kids and start the healing of the psychological and emotional trauma under which the children have been since 2016.
Ndigwe decried the controversial decision of the Italian authorities to deny his visa application and request to recover his children. “It is quite baffling. What other better reasons could one proffer for the grant of application of this sort?” he queried.
“I want to place it on record that those children have economically buoyant relations who are pressurising me, as the children’s father, to go and make arrangements for their return to Nigeria, their country, their root and their home,” he stressed, adding that “any flimsy reason to deny those children the opportunity to reunite with their father is inhuman, condemnable and must be vehemently opposed”.
GIST BY: NAIRALAND
Orient Weekend reports that Mr. Ndigwe, a native of Nnukwu village in Adazinnukwu in Anaocha local government area of Anambra state, lost his wife, Joy, and first son, Gozie Samuel, during a dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea on September 5, 2016 from Morocco to Italy. Nearly two years after the tragic incident, he is still battling hard to recover his two surviving children – Tochukwu Mathew and Ebubechukwu David – who were lucky to survive the tragic voyage and had remained in the custody of an Italian – Ms. Malandrino Maria Paula, in Siracusa, a town 30km from Catania in Italy.
According to the embattled father of three, who was incarcerated in Moroccan prison when the tragedy befell his family, efforts to secure Italian visa for a trip to Italy to reunite with the remainder of his family, in the form of the two survivor children, has been fraught with frustrating legal quagmires.
Ikechukwu told newsmen in Onitsha that the rejection of his visa application and request to repatriate his kids was flimsy, baseless and without substance, insisting that he should be allowed to “enter Italy and see my children.”
He said that he met his late wife, a Nigerian from Benin City in Edo state, in Morocco, married her and that the marriage yielded three children. According to him, all was going well for the family until he was jailed by Moroccan authorities late July 2014. He told newsmen that his late wife and children used to visit him in prison until they joined other desperate migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.
“I remember there was a time she told me that she would be relocating to Italy. I objected to the idea, telling her to either stay back in Morocco with my children or go back to Nigeria pending when I would finish my prison term. By then, it was just six months for me to come out.
“However, for some time, I did not hear from her again and I suspected that something may have happened until the news came that she, with the kids, was heading to Italy through the Mediterranean Sea when their boat developed problem and capsized off the Libyan coast. The corpse of my wife was found but that of my first son was not. Her corpse, till this day, remains in the custody of the Italian government.
According to him, all his efforts to recover his lost kids had been frustrated by legal encumbrances. Hear him: “When this incident happened, I told my elder sister, Mrs Obiageli Ebilite to get my lawyer, Barrister A. M. Egbesons based in Onitsha, to write the Nigerian embassy in Italy, Italian government and Italian embassy in Lagos. He was to remind them that the surviving kids still had their biological father alive and that they should hand the kids over to them as closest relations.
“The Italian tribunal that entertains minor cases which was presided over by Dottoressa Pricoco Francisco, in Catania, kept my two kids in the Home Department, in the care of a guardian, Mrs Malandrino Maria Paula. The tribunal order was that the kids be handed over to their relations on the ground that they will show proof that they are financially buoyant to take care of them which the couple did but the Italian embassy in Lagos failed to grant my request for entry permit into Italy.
“When I came out of prison I continued from where my sister stopped, demanding to be issued with an Italian visa to go and reunite with my children and arrange to bring them back to Nigeria. That condition of being financially buoyant will not be extended to me as the biological father even if I am assumed to be (financially) unfit. Consequently, we wrote the Italian government, appealing for reversal of the refusal by its embassy in Lagos to issue me visa to travel to Italy to see my kids and start the healing of the psychological and emotional trauma under which the children have been since 2016.
Ndigwe decried the controversial decision of the Italian authorities to deny his visa application and request to recover his children. “It is quite baffling. What other better reasons could one proffer for the grant of application of this sort?” he queried.
“I want to place it on record that those children have economically buoyant relations who are pressurising me, as the children’s father, to go and make arrangements for their return to Nigeria, their country, their root and their home,” he stressed, adding that “any flimsy reason to deny those children the opportunity to reunite with their father is inhuman, condemnable and must be vehemently opposed”.
GIST BY: NAIRALAND
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