Years after losing her life to cancer, unknown gunmen, for inexplicable reasons, have added to the sorrows of the Akunyili family of Agulu, Anambra State by killing their partriach, Dr. James Chike Akunyili.

A medical doctor by training and profession, unconfirmed reports allege that members of the Eastern Security Network and Indigenous People of Biafra were responsible for the dastardly and gruesome act which occurred on Tuesday, September 28, 2021. Another version said it was killer herdsmen and as he was returning to Enugu after a meeting in Onitsha, Anambra State.

In his 60s, the soft spoken gentleman who stood by his wife, Dorothy Nkemdilim Akunyili (nee Edemobi) all through her time at NAFDAC and later as Nigeria’s Minister of Information, till death separated them in 2014, was based in the east where he was also practicing – he ran St. Leo’s Hospital, said to be one of the biggest in the coal city. A first class graduate, he was simply put, a good and kind man.

In an exclusive interview with this reporter years ago in her office in Abuja, Dora said both of them met in 1976 at the Teaching Hospital, Enugu. Their friendship was further strengthened by the husband’s sister, Josephine, who was her school mother. They eventually got married on April 15, 1978. Same 1978, their first child, a girl arrived. Then, the second one, a boy, Obum. Followed by the third and fourth who are also girls.

Their only son works with the Anambra State governor, one of the girls is an artist while the two others are married to foreigners.

The Anambra State Police Command was yet to issue an official statement as at the time of writing this.