Return of the mortal remains of Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs and other matters

BY SOTONYE IJUYE-DAGOGO

About 445 days after he passed on December 27, 2018 the mortal remains of High Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs was finally brought home, after the myriad of legal hurdles initiated by his widow, Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs to frustrate the family from taking custody of the body, were surmounted. The good news of the homecoming of the mortal remains of the late paramount chief was released today by the chief of the family, Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs.

Recall, that after the Supreme Court of Ghana on February 11, 2020 dismissed the application of Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs to stop the release of the mortal remains of her husband, High Chief O.B. Lulu-Briggs to the family led by Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs, Seinye on the same day filed another matter at the High Court for orders of injunction against the removal of the body until her case against the Coroner’s order for an inquest was determined.

On Tuesday, February 25, 2020, the High Court declined to grant Seinye’s request to restrain the family led by Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs from taking possession of the mortal remains of her husband. This ruling enabled Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs to immediately take custody of the body of his father to the utter chagrin of Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs before she could serve the mortuary with papers of her appeal to the Court of Appeal.

Frustrated, Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs went to town with the false story that Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs had smuggled his father’s corpse to an unknown destination against the the ruling of the Ghana High Court.

Amusingly, when on February 27, 2020 , both parties appeared again before the same High Court Judge, Seinye’s lawyers did not raise the issue of Dumo’s smuggling of the corpse against the orders of the court. They didn’t because they know they were only deceiving the public with the fake story. On that day, the High Court dismissed Seinye’s suit to stop the inquest into her husband’s sudden death.

Not done, Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs in anticipation of the unfavorable ruling by the High Court on her application against the orders of the Coroner for an inquest, instituted another suit on February 25, 2020 against the Attorney General of Ghana to cancel the “Export Permit” granted Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs to convey his father’s corpse from Ghana to Nigeria.

Since February 25 and 27, 2020 when the High Court dismissed Seinye’s applications to restrain the family from taking custody of the body and quash the orders of the Coroner for an inquest, Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs had waited on possible actions from the Attorney General of Ghana in response to Seinye’s suit.

Having waited for almost three weeks, and not being a party to Seinye’s suit against the Attorney General of Ghana, Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs activated all processes, as ordered by the High Court and upheld by the Supreme Court, for the transportation of the mortal remains of his father by air from Ghana to Nigeria

Totally deflated, Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs says that Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs had smuggled his father into Port Harcourt, wondering “why the return of a man such as the High Chief Dr. O. B. Lulu-Briggs, who towered highly and impacted many both locally and globally, would be shrouded in secrecy and his body smuggled into town unceremoniously, rather than marked with dignified and respectable solemnities that he deserves”.

No. Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs didn’t need to smuggle his father’s corpse into Nigeria because he had all the legal papers to transport his father’s body from Ghana to Nigeria. He brought the body by air through the airports of both countries, fulfilling all laid down regulations and protocols. Rather it was Seinye Lulu-Briggs that was alleged to have smuggled her dead husband from Port Harcourt to Accra and allegedly smuggled his corpse from the Kotoka International Airport, Accra into a mortuary without any record of such death to the Ghanaian security agencies. Happily but to her total disappointment, the High Chief has been brought home finally.

Here is the same woman who in her “Terms of Settlement” submitted in the High Court in Accra insisted “That the body of the deceased High Chief be released from Transition Home on the date of the agreed burial date to be airlifted to Nigeria”. That her husband she claims to have loved during his life time, who is a Paramount Chief in Kalabari-Ijaw land, should be airlifted from Accra to Abonnema on the day of burial. What honour did she intend to accord him by such indignity? What shameless contradiction from a woman consumed by unprecedented greed?

Seinye Lulu-Briggs now intimidates media houses. Her lawyers write to newspaper houses to retract on previous publications or face legal actions. Frustrated in her losing battle against Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs, Seinye has shifted her legal battles against media houses and against writers.

Seinye, smacked her lips with another twisted story captioned:

“THISDAY’S APOLOGY TO WIDOW, SEINYE LULU-BRIGGS, CONFIRMATION OF DUMO AS AN UNREPENTANT PURVEYOR OF FAKE NEWS”

She says that:

“Investigative revelations by ThisDay Newspaper have vindicated Dr. Mrs Seinye O. B. Lulu-Briggs and eventually shown that its report of December 8, 2019 titled MORE SHOCKING REVELATIONS CONCERNING LULU-BRIGGS DEATH contained false, misleading, inaccurate and defamatory contents against her person, causing the Newspaper to retract the story in its entirety and apologizing to the innocent widow”.

But in her characteristic manner of always misleading the public, Seinye Lulu-Briggs did not say that the story captioned “More Shocking Revelations Concerning Lulu-Briggs Death” published by ThisDay newspaper on Sunday December 8, 2019, which the paper retracted, was written by a reporter of the newspaper and not by Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs or any of his associates.

For the avoidance of doubt, we hereby state unequivocally that we stand by all we have written and published from the beginning of this unfortunate crisis that was instigated by Mrs. Seinye Lulu-Briggs. We have no reason to retract any position that we had advanced, knowing that we always stated the truth.

Even in this onslaught against media houses, Seinye Lulu-Briggs would fail, as she has been failing and would fail to the very end.