Three weeks after 26-year-old physiotherapist Mary Habila was found dead at Works Minister David Umahi’s country home, the case has turned into a standoff between investigators, the minister’s lawyers, and her grieving family, one nearing a breaking point as relatives prepare to bury her without the autopsy police say is essential.
Habila died on June 27, 2026, inside a staff residential building on the grounds of Umahi’s residence in Uburu, in Ebonyi State’s Ohaozara Local Government Area.
According to lawyers representing the minister, she was staying in a building set aside for members of Umahi’s staff and other personnel who worked with him, and did not share living quarters with the minister himself.
On the night she died, only Habila and one other woman, a fellow physiotherapist, were said to have been in the building.
Police say the alarm was raised the same day. The Ohaozara Divisional Police Officer received a distress call about a medical emergency and rushed to the David Umahi Federal University Teaching Hospital in Uburu, where hospital staff informed him that Habila had been brought in dead.
The DPO briefed the commissioner of police, who ordered the matter transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department for a full inquiry. Detectives have since visited the scene and taken statements from those said to have relevant knowledge of the events of that night.
Preliminary findings shared by police spokesperson SP Joshua Ukandu indicate that Habila and a colleague were part of the medical team attached to Umahi and had travelled with him to his hometown, where she later died in a room inside the compound of his residence.
What has turned a private tragedy into a national controversy is the sharp disagreement over whether Habila’s body should be cut open for answers.
Ebonyi police have been unambiguous: they consider a post-mortem indispensable. “The Command considers the examination necessary, given the sensitive nature of the case and the imperative of establishing the true cause of death,” Ukandu said in a statement issued Wednesday, even while acknowledging that Habila’s relatives have formally objected to the procedure.
Umahi, for his part, has publicly aligned himself with the police position repeatedly and with growing insistence. Days after the death, his media aide said the minister had “received the news with profound shock and sadness” and had personally met with Habila’s parents to press the case for an autopsy, though the family “initially declined.”
By mid-July, Umahi escalated the matter formally: his lawyers, the firm Roy & Associates, wrote to the Ebonyi Commissioner of Police on July 15 demanding a comprehensive autopsy by qualified forensic pathologists and asking that Habila’s remains not be released to anyone, including her own next of kin, until the examination and all other investigative steps are complete.
The lawyers framed the request as necessary to preserve the integrity of the investigation, eliminate speculation, and conclusively establish the true cause of death before burial.
Adding further institutional weight to that push, the Ebonyi State Director of Public Prosecutions, J.U. Chukwu, issued legal advice also dated July 15 and addressed to the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of criminal investigations, concluding that only a post-mortem could determine how Habila died.
Citing the case file, the DPP’s advice noted that available evidence indicated Habila was alone in her apartment at the time she was found dead. That advice has, for now, kept her body in official custody rather than released for burial.
Despite the pressure from police, prosecutors, and the minister’s lawyers, Habila’s family has signaled it intends to proceed with burial regardless.
Relatives have announced she will be buried on Friday, July 17, 2026, at the Deeper Life Bible Church in Nok, in the Jaba Local Government Area of Kaduna State, her home community. When Sahara Reporters approached her father at an Ebonyi morgue ahead of the planned burial, he declined to comment on the case.
Sources close to the investigation have alleged something more troubling than a simple family preference: that relatives are being discouraged from insisting on an autopsy.
Police sources told Sahara Reporters that investigators had received information suggesting members of Habila’s family were being pressured not to press for a post-mortem examination.
Beneath the autopsy dispute lies a murkier disagreement about the basic facts of Habila’s presence at the minister’s residence. Umahi has maintained that Habila was a physiotherapist formally seconded to the Federal Ministry of Works from the David Umahi Federal University of Health Sciences, alongside a second woman.
But police sources have pushed back hard on that characterization, telling Sahara Reporters they were “not convinced” the two women were actually employees of the university, as the minister’s account claims.
Those same sources say a police officer serving as Umahi’s personal aide, previously his aide-de-camp during his tenure as Ebonyi governor, was the one who had brought the two women to the residence and was also the person who alerted medical personnel once Habila was found unresponsive. It remains publicly unclear what official assignment, if any, brought hospital staff to the minister’s private residence in the first place.
The case has also been complicated by unverified but widely circulated images purporting to show Habila’s body being removed from the residence without clothing, along with visible injuries claims that investigators say they have not yet confirmed.
Umahi has acknowledged Habila died at his residence but has not said publicly whether he was present in the house at the moment of her death; one source told reporters he was there but left shortly afterward, an account that has not been independently verified by police.
Compounding the tension, lawyers acting for the minister reportedly asked investigators to release Habila’s body for burial in Ebonyi State, a request police say they refused, insisting the case remains under active investigation and that releasing the body before forensic procedures conclude would be inappropriate given the intense public interest it has generated.
The case has rippled well beyond Ebonyi’s police corridors. The Southern Kaduna People’s Union, representing Habila’s home community, has called on the Inspector-General of Police to ensure a “rigorous, transparent, and exhaustive” investigation, while extending condolences to her family and the wider Ham nation.
Separately, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission reportedly questioned and released a group of supporters of former presidential candidate Peter Obi in connection with commentary on the case, an indication of how quickly the story has moved from a local incident to a matter of national political conversation.
As of Wednesday night, Ebonyi police say they are pressing ahead with plans to engage a pathologist but are awaiting the arrival of Habila’s family or an authorized representative, whose physical presence they say is legally required before a post-mortem can proceed.
Ukandu has pledged that the command remains committed to a “thorough, transparent, and impartial” investigation and promised further updates as the inquiry develops.
For now, the central question hangs unresolved just a day ahead of the family’s planned funeral: whether Habila will be buried with the cause of her death still undetermined or whether police, prosecutors, and a government minister’s demand for an autopsy will ultimately override a grieving family’s wish to lay her to rest without one.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The police, prosecutors, and the minister all want an autopsy, but Habila’s family doesn’t and is set to bury her on Friday without one.
That’s the one fact worth holding onto. Everything else, the disputed employment status of the two women, the unverified image claims, and the allegations that the family is being pressured, is still unconfirmed.
Until an autopsy happens (if it happens at all), the actual cause of Mary Habila’s death remains officially undetermined, whatever any single source or statement claims.
