Former Governor, Jim Nwogbodo disowns children

Former Governor of the old Anambra State, Senator Jim Nwobodo, has disowned his children and said his children from his former wife are not his flesh and blood.

Nwobodo equally accused the two surviving children from his first marriage, Chukwudi and Nonso, of stealing the corpse of their older brother, the late Ifeanyichukwu Nwobodo, who died recently after battling with cancer.

Ifeanyichukwu’s burial, which was scheduled to hold on Friday, was aborted after Nwobodo and the deceased’s siblings disagreed over a burial site.
Punch reports that, While the father insisted that the body would be buried outside his compound, the children maintained that the grave must be within the residence.



To compound the impasse generated by the row, Ifeanyichukwu’s corpse was not available for burial – it was gathered that his siblings relocated the body from the mortuary to an unknown destination, in order to prevent it from being interred in a grave dug within the compound of a newly erected bungalow which Nwobodo built after the son’s death.

Nwobodo broke his silence on the matter while addressing journalists at his house in Amechi, Awkunanaw, Enugu, on Tuesday. In an emotion-laden voice, the former governor stated his own side of the story.

He said,

“This is not really a very happy occasion for me – at my age, I should be talking about peace and not to get involved in something like this.Ifeanyi was my first son and unknown to us, myself and my wife, his family hid him. When we got to know that he was sick, we were very worried, we made sure he was taken to the best cancer hospital in the US.”“From the day he died, I started planning for his burial. Because of politics, I felt that I should bury him before the primaries.
“Chukwudi and Nonso (Ifeanyi’s siblings) came to see me here and I told them that the burial will be in two weeks time, that they should come back so that we could plan for it. As I am talking, I have seen neither Chukwudi nor Nonso till date. Their sister, who came back from US and called me to say that she is back, as I am talking to you, I have not seen her. You start to wonder- what kind of children are these?” he added.

He blamed his former wife for the actions of feanyichukwu’s siblings, saying

“it also depicts the character of their mother and her children.”

The former governor emphasised that he has only one wife, having divorced his former wife.

“The press said I have two wives – it is not true. I divorced her (former wife) before I became governor. I have the divorce papers, please don’t refer to me as having two wives. I am a decent man. I have only one wife. Please save me the trouble and embarrassment of talking about matrimonial trouble, the church will not wed me if I have two wives.
The children through her (former wife) cannot be said to have been flesh and blood. I am stopping at that – you know what I mean. A child that is yours will not hurt you like this, these children cannot be my flesh and blood.
“My children love me. It is only children that are not yours that will seize their brother’s dead body. If they can steal the dead body of their brother, it is terrible, unprecedented.”