Jealous nurse pours acid on lover

A 25-year-old man, Edmund Educhukwu, is currently receiving treatment at the intensive care unit of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital after his girlfriend, Dorothy Nkanu, poured acid on him.

PUNCH Metro learnt that Educhukwu and Nkanu live in the same apartment.

The nurse, who is being detained by the police in Calabar, Cross River State, allegedly poured a bucket of acid on her lover following suspicion that he was dating another lady.

Although Educhukwu was rushed to UCTH by neighbours immediately after the incident on Friday, his right eye, face and torso were badly damaged by the acid.

Educhukwu, a final year student at the University of Calabar, told our correspondent that he and Nkanu had been lovers for some time.

“We even had passionate time that night and it was in the morning that she did this to me without any warning,” he said.

On what might have prompted such an attack, he said Nkanu had once accused him of planning to dump her for another lady.

Educhukwu said, “But I reassured her that it was not true that people were only trying to destroy our relationship. But it did not occur to me that she was still harbouring the grudge.

 “It was when I was rounding off our early morning prayers with my eyes still closed that she tip-toed outside, brought the bucket containing the acid and poured it on me.”

He said Nkanu, who is from Agwagwune in Biase Local Government Area of the state, chose the time to attack him when he was not wearing shirt.

“After pouring the acid on me she taunted me. She asked me the God was I praying to that supports my plan?”

Medical practitioners at the UCTH confirmed that one of the eyes had been completely destroyed while the second one could be still salvaged.

One of the doctors, who craved anonymity, said, “He needs a skin transplant and adequate care for the other eye to be restored at least for him to see with it and that cannot be done here but outside this country, perhaps in the United Kingdom or United States.”

When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mr. John Umoh, said Nkanu had been arrested, adding that investigation was ongoing.