By Pius Awunah
A woman, identified as Mama Ebube, and her two children were found dead in her provision shop at Unguwar Gbakya in the Abaji area of the Federal Capital Territory.
The tragic discovery was made recently after a foul odor began to emanate from the shop.
Naighbours said the woman, who sold provisions and charcoal, had been sleeping in the shop with her two children, a boy and a girl, since Saturday.September 13,2025.
On Wednesday morning, September 17,2025,strong odour alerted residents, including a naighbour, Mrs. Eliabeth Ishaku.
“The woman’s shop is right next to mine, and I thought she had just gone out,” said Ishaku.
She added, “It was not until Wednesday that I, and some other naighbours started to perceive the smell. We became suspicious and immediately alerted the police.”
She said, upon arrival, police officers forced the shop open and found the decomposed bodies.
According to her, officials from the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) were then called to the scene and they came to evacuate the corpses in to their ambulance.
Residents offered varying theories on the cause of their deaths. Some suspect that the family died from inhaling smoke from a lit mosquito coil, while others believe they may have succumbed to rat poison.
The woman, a native of Ebonyi State, had reportedly been sleeping in the shop with her children for more than two years.
It was reported that due to the foul stench, many residents who gathered at the scene wore nose masks.
An FRSC official, who was part of the evacuation team, said the cause of the deaths could not be confirmed until an autopsy was performed. “No one can say for sure what killed the woman and her two children until doctors at the hospital conduct an autopsy,” he said.
A police source at the scene confirmed the discovery of the bodies but also noted that the cause of death remains unknown pending an autopsy.
“Some people said it was a mosquito coil, while others said it was rat poison they inhaled but we won’t really know the cause of their deaths until an autopsy is conducted,” one of the police officers said.
The spokesperson for the FCT police command, SP Adeh Josephine, was yet to issue an official statement on the deaths at the time of filing the report.
