June 6, 2012  by Adelani Adepegba and Kunle Falayi

 

The Gwarimpa home of Dr. Abiodun Jonathan has been receiving sympathisers trooping in to commiserate with his wife, Funmi, over the death of her husband in the Dana plane crash on Sunday.

Until his death,   Jonathan, a pediatrician, served as an assistant pastor with a branch of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Abuja. He assumed the  position in 2005. He was born on April 8, 1971, and hailed from Sabongida Ora in Edo State.

Looking subdued and surrounded by friends and relatives, Funmi put up a bold face, smiling in response to greetings and words of encouragement from sympathisers. She tried to hide her pain behind a calm mien even as she received telephone calls intermittently.

Funmi said her pastor had last Thursday seen a vision that a parishioner would be “forcefully uprooted from our midst” and the congregation had prayed against sudden death.

PUNCH Metro learnt that Jonathan had only on Sunday handed over the administration of the church to a new person before boarding the ill-fated plane.

She said, “Last Thursday, the senior pastor of our church saw a vision that someone was forcefully uprooted from our midst and the whole church prayed against it.

“As if my husband knew something would happen to him, he handed over the church administration to the new administrator before he travelled and the next thing we heard was that he was involved in the plane crash.”

The mother of three stated that her late husband was quite close to his patients whom he prayed for constantly. She described Jonathan as a hero who lived his life for Christ and encouraged others to be conscious of the reality of eternity.

“He was a man that lived for Christ and if there was anything I learnt from him, it was that eternity is a reality we must prepare for,” Funmi said.

On how the children were taking the incident, she said they understood that their father had transited to heaven, pointing out that the children would continue to abide by their father’s instructions despite his demise.

Funmi said she had no regrets knowing her late husband whom she met and fell in love with in 1997 when he was doing his national service at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, Lagos.

She explained that she was attracted to him by his genial and selfless nature, describing the pediatrician as her strength, confidante, soulmate and a caring father.

Pastor Michael Adelusi of Christ Apostolic Church, Dei-Dei, Abuja, said the deceased once led a five-man medical mission to his church where they attended to members of the congregation with medical problems.

“His (Jonathan’s) intervention saved two lives who had very high blood pressure; it is quite painful to hear that he has passed away,” he said.

Mix-up over victim’s name on manifest

Despite the sombre atmosphere at the Jonathans, there was a mild argument over the authenticity of the manifest released by Dana airlines. It was observed that the official manifest indicated two names – Mr. Abiodun Oluwasegunfunmi and Abiodun Jonathan for the late doctor.

Sympathisers contended that this might become an issue when it is time for the company to settle the insurance claims.

“The airline and its insurance company may want to capitalise on the mix-up in the names to dodge payment of insurance claims. Apart from this, the manifest contains the names of many who were not on board while the names of some on board were not on the manifest,” a visitor said.

Journalists protest treatment by soldiers

Some Nigerian journalists, who visited the crash site of the ill-fated Dana flight 0992 on Tuesday, expressed dismay that they were prevented from accessing the site by security operatives, who allowed some foreign journalists into the area.

A reporter from one of the TV stations in Lagos, was shoved by a soldier who threatened to use his belt on him.

“After he shoved us and asked us to stay back even though we had told him we were journalists, he allowed some foreign journalists in without verifying their identities,” another journalist told our correspondent.

Our correspondent noticed that the foreign journalists were reporters of Chinese TV station, CCTV. Six Chinese were said to have died in the crash.

However, our correspondent noticed that some Nigerian journalists had earlier been allowed into the site.  The soldiers at the scene did not have name tags on their uniforms.

Meanwhile, as the search and rescue operations entered its third day, the crash site continued to attract crowd, many of whom were engaged in long arguments as to what could have gone wrong.

A man, Mark Ibe, lamented that the crowd had turned the site into a tourist site.

“Our people perish for lack of knowledge. Crash sites and accident scenes have become tourists’ attractions. We no longer have a country, except that we still exist,” he said.

As one of our correspondents visited the scene on Tuesday, arguments were going on everywhere among the large crowd; each person offering opinions on the tragedy.

As at 3:30pm when our correspondent left the site, five more bodies had been recovered; one of them, a child.

-Punch

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