Heartbreak: Ifeanyi Ubah’s Sister Dies on Her Way to Give Testimony in Church

Sunday morning should have been a day of thanksgiving. Instead, it ended in tears.

Mrs. Fidelia Ezinwanne Chigbogu, 61, the immediate elder sister of the late Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, woke up hale and hearty. No fever. No headache. No warning.

She had just taken her bath. Dressed up. Ready for church.

Her testimony was ready. Days earlier, their meter had exploded, burning their change-over room. God had spared them. She told her husband she would mount the altar that Sunday to thank God.

She never made it.

Her husband, Chudi Chidinma Chigbogu, from Nnewi, still cannot believe it. His voice breaks as he speaks.

“It was like a shock to me, because even as I am talking to you now, I never believed it,” he sobbed.

She was fondly called “Darling.” And she was.

That morning, as usual, she was to leave home between 7 and 7:30 a.m. for her duties in church. Her husband stepped out to wash dust off the car.

By 8 a.m., she had not come downstairs.

“Why has mummy not come down? Go and check,” he told their son.

Seconds later, the house was pierced by a scream.

“He called his mummy and she did not answer, he lifted her hand and her hand dropped.”

He raced upstairs. His darling lay on the bed, still, unresponsive. He called her names. Shook her. No response.

What followed was a frantic, desperate dash for life — from one hospital to another. Six hospitals.

“Anywhere we went, they will take me aside and say I didn’t bring her on time, that she has passed on. I said no, it is not possible,” the grieving husband recounted.

At the Navy Hospital, they refused to admit her. It was over.

Back home, prayers. Tears. Disbelief. For hours, he refused to let the ambulance take her.

Until about 4 p.m., when a woman told him she had seen his wife in a vision — moving fast, without looking back, on her way to heaven.

“That was when I changed my mind,” he said.

By 6 p.m., the ambulance left Lagos. By 7 a.m. the next day, it arrived in the village.

What a life. What a loss.

Mr. Chigbogu described her not just as a wife, but a leader. A peacemaker. The settler of family disputes. A philanthropist who built women, served fervently in church, and gave joyfully.

Even in death, she leaves a burden of love — an orphanage project she was working on.

“Even though she is no more, I will not let her down, I will make sure that project comes to pass,” he vowed through tears.

Second daughter of seven children — three boys, four girls — and a trustee of the Ubah family, Fidelia has gone to give her testimony in heaven.