Her death was confirmed to Bellnews on Wednesday morning by her surviving daughter, Chikiezie Ifeoma Lilian, who revealed that her mother died on Friday, August 8, 2025.
A Nigerian woman, Mrs. Chioma Chikadibia, has died after months of battling depression and ill health over the continued detention of her husband and three daughters by the Abia State Police Command.
Her death was confirmed to Bellnews on Wednesday morning by her surviving daughter, Chikiezie Ifeoma Lilian, who revealed that her mother died 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.
The detainees — 63-year-old shoemaker, Mr. Chikadibia Sunday, and his daughters, Glory, Ngozi, and Ogechi — were arrested on April 12, 2025, during a violent midnight raid on their home in Alaukwu Village, Osisioma Ngwa Local Government Area.
Eyewitnesses told Bellnews that armed men from the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Abia State Police Command, some in plain clothes, stormed the house, broke down doors, seized valuables and cash, and carted the family away without showing a warrant.
For weeks, police denied holding the family despite mounting evidence and eyewitness accounts. It was later discovered that they had been secretly arraigned and remanded at the Aba Correctional Centre — a process carried out without notifying relatives or granting access to legal representation.
In May, Mrs. Chioma granted an exclusive interview to SaharaReporters in which she described her husband’s worsening health in custody and the destruction of her family’s life, businesses, and education.
She revealed that her youngest daughter, Ogechi, a final-year student of the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu, had missed her examinations and risked an extra year in school due to the detention.
“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.”
Her grief, combined with the absence of any intervention from the police or government despite public outcry, eventually pushed her into deep depression, according to relatives.
The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) had also condemned the arrests as “a gross abuse of police power and due process.”
Its Executive Director, Okechukwu Nwanguma, called on the Inspector-General of Police and the Abia State Commissioner of Police to investigate the incident and release the detainees immediately.
“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.
Bellnews had also reported how the police secretly arraigned Chikadibia Sunday, and his three daughters, Ngozi, Ogechi, and Glory, after holding them incommunicado for over weeks at the notorious Anti-Kidnapping Unit in Umuahia, in May.
They were arraigned without legal representation of their choice and access to their family.