The remains of the Late Governor of Kaduna State, Patrick
Yakowa, and that of his aide and friend, Dauda Tsoho, arrived in Kaduna
airport aboard a Nigerian Air Force cargo plane at 2.45pm on Tuesday.
The bodies were received by hundreds of wailing sympathisers who thronged the airport.
Bodies
of the late governor as well as those of other four, out of the six
victims of Saturday’s naval helicopter crash in Okorobo, Bayelsa State,
had been airlifted from Yenagoa aboard a Nigerian Air Force Super Puma
Helicopter marked NAF 567 at 11.45am.
The other bodies that left
Yenagoa alongside that of Yakowa and Tsoho were those of an ex-National
Security Adviser Gen. Owoye Azazi’s bodyguard, Warrant Officer Mohammed
Kamal; and the two naval pilots, Commander Murtala Mohammed Daba, and
Lt. Adeyemi Sowole.
The PUNCH learnt that the NAF aircraft
stopped at the Port Harcourt airport in Rivers State where the
bodies
were flown to different destinations in different aircrafts.
Yakowa
and the four, as well as Azazi, were victims of the crashed Augusta 109
Naval Helicopter in Okoroba, Bayelsa State, on Saturday.
They
met their death while returning from the burial of the father of
President Goodluck Jonathan’s aide, Oronto Douglas. Douglas is
Jonathan’s Adviser on Research, Documentation and Strategy.
The
remains of Azazi, an indigene of Bayelsa, were however left in the
mortuary of the Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa, for burial on a date
yet to be announced by the government.
While the bodies of Yakowa
and Tsoho were airlifted from Port Harcourt to Kaduna, those of Daba
and Sowole were taken to their respective home states in Kano and Lagos.
Two
black caskets with silver handles bore Yakowa’s and Tsoho’s remains
while three brown caskets with golden handles contained the bodies of
three others.
The caskets which were covered with the Nigerian
flags were accompanied by Bayelsa State Governor Seriake Dickson; his
wife, Rachel; Deputy Governor John Douglas; a former governor of the
state, Diepreye Alameiseigha; commissioners and other members of the
state executive council.
At the special valedictory session in
honour of Yakowa at the Executive Chambers of the Government House
before the late governor’s remains departed the state, were also the
Flag Officer Commanding, Central Naval Command, Rear Admiral Johnson
Olutoyin; commanders of the Air Force Mobility Command, the Joint Task
Force, and the state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Kingsley Omire, among
others.
Dickson poured encomiums on the late Yakowa, describing him as a bridge builder and humble governor.
Some chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party, including the aides of the late Yakowa, attended the ceremony.
Dickson, who said Yakowa died in active service, added that his death should encourage people to live in peace and harmony.
In
Kaduna, children, women as well as men wailed as the delegation from
Bayelsa State, led by Alamieseigha, formally handed over the corpses of
Yakowa and his aide to top Kaduna State government functionaries.
At
the Kaduna airport to receive the corpses were the new Governor of the
state, Mukhtar Yero; Yakowa’s widow, Amina; Senator Danjuma Goje;
Senator Bola Saraki; and top state functionaries.
The Catholic
Archbishop of Kaduna Diocese, Archbishop Matthew Man Oso Ndagoso; and
the Catholic Bishop of Zaria, Rev George Jonathan Dodo, took turns to
pray for the remains of the late governor and his aide before the
caskets were transferred into an Hilux ambulance.
From the
airport, the two golden caskets were driven in a motorcade through the
Nnamdi Azikiwe Western Bypass to the Saint Gerard Catholic Hospital
where the corpses were deposited in the mortuary.
The Senate
President, David Mark, in company with his wife, Helen, was at the St.
Gerard Hospital. He later proceeded to the Government House to pay
condolence to Yakowa’s family.
The late governor is expected to
be buried on Thursday in his home town, Fadan Kagoma in Jema’a Local
Government Area of the state.
Meanwhile, one of the soldiers that
moved the bodies of Yakowa and the others from the morgue into the
helicopter slumped shortly after the assignment, thus causing panic and
anxiety among those at the venue.
The state medical team however revived the soldier, whose name could not be ascertained, several minutes after.
The
collapsed soldier was among the two groups of soldiers who took turns
to lift the caskets bearing the bodies of the victims into the Air Force
helicopter.
Each group, under the command of a parade commander, was made up of six soldiers.
The
collapsed soldier who apparently was exhausted after the assignment
slumped and was immediately rushed into an ambulance belonging to the
Nigerian Air Force Mobility Command at 10.40am.
The ambulance
consequently rushed the soldier to the Government House Medical Centre,
where a medical team battled to revive him.
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