The husband of late Nigerian gospel singer Osinachi Nwachukwu has been arrested days after her death in hospital in Abuja.
Peter Nwachukwu, a lead singer at the Dunamis International Gospel Centre, Abuja, rose to fame in 2017 with ‘Ekwueme,’ a song she did with Prospa Ochimana.
Peter Nwachukwu was arrested after her family formally filed a complaint of “culpable homicide against one Mr Peter Nwachukwu who is a husband to the deceased
“He is now in our custody. The younger brother of the deceased reported the matter and we have commenced investigation,” Abuja police command spokeswoman Josephine Adeh said.
The deceased singer’s elder sister, Ms. Favour Made, alleged in an interview with Vanguard that Osinachi was kicked in the chest by her husband Nwachukwu's.
Made said in the interview that her family had tried unsuccessfully to make her walk away from the marriage because of domestic violence.
“When the man kicked her on the chest, she fell down and he took her to the hospital but he did not even tell us,” Ms Made told Vanguard. “It was her friend who lives in Ebonyi state that called her twin sister, because Osinachi has a twin sister, to ask, ‘did your sister tell you that Peter hit her on the chest? the sister then told her no.
“It was the hitting on the chest that killed her. My brother had to ask doctor what killed her and doctor said that there were clusters of blood on her chest.”
A few gospel singers who worked with Osinachi Nwachukwu also accused her husband of domestic violence.
“One time in a studio, this man slapped her just because she wanted to record the song in Igbo against his will. She does not do anything on her own,” a gospel Frank Edwards said on Instagram Live.
“She would say, please beg my husband. She was at his mercy. I didn’t know the intensity of what she was going through; I didn’t know how somebody would be jealous of the wife he claimed to love.”