Mr. Sonnie Bassey, the Calabar-based man whose lawyer wife, Claret Opara Bassey, reportedly died in a lone accident on Murtala Mohammed highway in Calabar on Sunday, September 18, has expressed disappointment in the reports of the incident.
He pointed out that what he is interested in is for him to bury his wife and give her that respect, stressing “my wife is not the first woman that has died in a motor accident.”
The incident had been enmeshed in controversy as different tales were woven around it, the most popular of which was the claim that the deceased woman, acting on information that her husband was seen in a shopping mall with a side-chic (girlfriend) was chasing her husband when the accident that killed her occurred.
As the story goes, Bassey had sighted Claret as she arrived at the shopping mall and immediately zoomed off while Claret also ran after him. They both drove on the highway until the point of the accident as Claret allegedly tried to overtake Bassey who immediately veered off the highway with the result that she lost control of her car, ran into a ditch and also collided with a tree.
Thereafter, there was also a story that made the rounds last week that Bassey had fallen into coma and died.
In a telephone conversation, however, Bassey dismissed the various tales as nothing but figments of the imagination of their peddlers, saying that his family and that of his late wife will be talking to newsmen after the deceased woman is buried.
He said: “Journalism goes beyond writing something you just hear from others. I have spoken with my elders, my relatives, my pastor and lawyers, and I have been advised to remain quiet for now.
“You know that I’m a Christian. We believe that nothing surpasses the knowledge of God. Be that as it may, if there were not to be all those write-ups and even extra length suggesting that I have been in coma and I’m dead, maybe I would have granted an interview.
“My wife was dead at the time I took her to the hospital, so there is no way she could have granted anybody an interview. From the things they wrote, it was as if the person was actually with my wife or my wife had told the person this was what happened.
“To the best of my knowledge, nobody was with my wife in her car, but they were saying things as if my wife had told somebody what happened. Be that as it may, as I mentioned earlier, I have chosen to be quiet until I bury my wife. After that I intend to have a press conference.
“Even the two families, my wife’s family and mine, intend to issue a briefing, but they also chose to be quiet at this point. So I want to crave your indulgence that you people should respect our space for now, because this is something that can happen to anybody.
“Even as I am, one day, I will also die. I am from Akwa Ibom where we respect the dead.”
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