Abuja wears its grief quietly now. It gathers at bus stops before dawn, rides in unmarked cars with strangers, and trails commuters down expressways that promise arrival but sometimes deliver only death.
On November, 14, 2024, Uche Nwokeke—the architect who designed the family playground, Abuja Wonderland;, a pastor, a father of four—received a call no husband ever prepares for. The police wanted him to come and identify a body. Friends, already summoned before him, intercepted Uche and shielded him from the first blow of reality. They tried, briefly, to manage the moment. But nothing manages grief.
His wife, Elizabeth, a staff of the Ministry of Communications, had been bludgeoned to death by assailants still unknown, her body discarded on the Kubwa Expressway like refuse after a hard day’s work. She had left home to earn a living and never returned. Uche cried until tears failed him. He still grieves, privately, endlessly.
When a reporter reached him, more than a year later—one year and two months after her murder—his voice carried just one sentence, stripped of rhetoric and hope: “Nigeria has failed me.” What pains him most is what he knows to be his wife’s heart cry when she was alive and incidents, like hers happened: Justice.
No arrests have been made. The killers escaped with a few personal effects and the larger prize of impunity. Uche laments that when the incident occured, a particular police spokesperson called him and he narrated the incident to her. She promised to do something. Since then, she stopped picking his calls.
Uche’s story is not singular. It is a refrain, echoing across the Federal Capital Territory, where the phrase “one chance” has become shorthand for terror. These marauders—posing as drivers, conductors, fellow passengers—have turned public transport into moving crime scenes. Wives, daughters, sisters, professionals vanish between bus stops.
Sometimes, the city snaps back.
On Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Way—the Airport Road, polished and symbolic, plied by diplomats and the powerful—two alleged “one chance” robbers met their end in 2025. A struggle with a female passenger drew attention. Another driver forced them to stop. An alarm was raised.
What followed was not law. It was rage.
The men were dragged out, beaten into stupor, and burned alive in broad daylight on the road that leads to Nigeria’s international gateway. No arrests. No trial. No questions. No answers. Whether tourists or business visitors witnessed the spectacle remains unknown. What is known is this: when the system fails repeatedly, citizens invent their own justice—however brutal, however final.
Still, amid the smoke and fear, some voices refuse to be quiet.
The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) has stepped forward, bristling with resolve. In January, two professionals—a nurse and a lawyer—were killed in separate “one chance” attacks in Abuja. FIDA has vowed not to let their deaths dissolve into statistics.
They were Chinemerem Chukwumeziem, a nurse with the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, killed on January 3; and Princess Mediatrix Chigbo, a lawyer, former Treasurer of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Abuja Branch, whose body was later found dumped along the Kubwa Expressway.
At a world press conference in Abuja, FIDA’s Chairperson, Chioma Onyenucheya-Uko, described the killings as a chilling signal of deepening insecurity.
“When officers of the court and defenders of rights are abducted and murdered on the streets of the nation’s capital,” she said, “it sends a chilling message to every resident—especially women and other vulnerable commuters—who already navigate public spaces under constant threat.”
FIDA insists these are not isolated crimes but part of a persistent, ignored pattern. The organisation has called for a declared security emergency against “one chance” operators, a multi-agency task force, functional CCTV along major corridors, and the sanitisation of Abuja’s chaotic transport system. It has demanded intelligence-driven patrols, arrests, prosecutions, and something residents have almost forgotten how to trust: regular public briefings.
“Justice must not only be done,” FIDA said. “It must be seen to be done.”
The story from Mediatrix family differ.
The family recounted the circumstances surrounding her abduction and killing, alleging a failed rescue effort and signs of severe torture.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the family said Chigbo, was abducted on Monday, January 5, 2026, and later killed by unidentified kidnappers in Abuja.
The statement, signed by her sister, Maureen Chigbo, said the lawyer was on a phone call with another sister, Anthonia, shortly before the abduction. Anthonia briefly placed the call on hold to attend to a client. When she returned, the line was still open, and she heard Nwamaka screaming before the call went silent.
The family said repeated attempts to reach her failed. When contact was eventually made, a man answered the phone, threatened the family in English and Hausa, and demanded a ₦3 million ransom, warning that the lawyer would be killed if payment was not made. The caller ended the conversation without providing payment details.
The family reported the incident to the police and contacted senior officers, including the FCT Commissioner of Police. They were later informed by the commander of the Scorpion Squad, Abuja’s anti-kidnapping unit, that the suspects were being tracked and were believed to be on the move.
No further calls came from the abductors. On one occasion, when the family managed to reach the line, they heard Chigbo crying that she was dying and pleading for the ransom to be paid before the call disconnected permanently.
In the early hours of Tuesday, January 6, police notified the family that a woman in critical condition had been taken to a specialist hospital in Abuja and requested a photograph for identification. After traveling from Lagos, Maureen Chigbo identified her sister’s body at the hospital mortuary.
The family said the body showed bruises, swollen eyes, and a cracked skull, which they said indicated torture before death.
Police authorities said investigations are ongoing and assured the family that those responsible would be arrested.
Others have joined the chorus for action. Human rights lawyer and television personality, Barrister Frank Tietie, spoke out after the killing of Nurse Chinemerem, calling for urgent protection for vulnerable workers.
The National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), Federal Health Institutions Sector, also mourned. Its National Secretary, Enya Osinachi, recounted how Chinemerem ended her afternoon shift, cared for patients, boarded public transport home—and never arrived. Days before the new year, her life was cut short.
The association warned that nurses, already stretched by long hours and unsafe commutes, are becoming easy prey. Sympathy, it said, is meaningless without concrete action: investigations, arrests, safer routes, staff transport, hazard allowances, life insurance, and recognition of nurses as high-risk essential workers.
When nurses die, the association noted, the nation loses more than caregivers—it loses morale, trust, and the fragile confidence of patients who depend on them.
And then there is Princess Mediatrix Chigbo.
Her lifeless body was discovered along the Kubwa Expressway, near Dawaki, opposite Gwarimpa Estate. A handbag believed to be hers lay some distance away, suggesting a violent encounter, a robbery, a forced exit—perhaps from a moving vehicle.
The legal community reeled.
Sir Chidi Udekwe, President of her professional association, spoke from the Kubwa General Hospital morgue, his words heavy with disbelief. “To see such a vibrant, promising soul stilled in such a manner is a pain that words cannot adequately capture,” he said.
Colleagues remember Mediatrix as a mentor, an advocate, a steady voice for justice and women’s rights. Her death has carved a hollow space not just in the legal profession, but in the community she served.
Abuja is a city on edge now. Every shared ride is a gamble. Every delayed arrival tightens the chest. The capital was meant to be a symbol—of order, of safety, of the Nigerian promise. Instead, it pulses with unanswered questions and quiet funerals.
For Uche, for Chinemerem, for Mediatrix, and for countless unnamed victims, the roads keep moving. Whether justice will ever catch up remains the one chance Nigeria keeps missing.
