……. My mother became a widow at 18

……..I was bullied when I was young

………I am looking for my father’s family members

………. My mother was seven months pregnant when my father was killed

……… I didn’t know my father

Mrs.  Angelle Burrus (Nee Udo), daughter and only child of the late Nigeria Sprinter, Ndubuisi  Dele Udo who was  gunned down at Ojuelegba by a Nigerian policeman in 1981  says she is yearning to come to Nigeria to locate her father’s family members and  visit  her father’s grave.  America-based journalist, Taiwo Abiodun met her in St. Louis, Missouri, America where she lives with her family.

Tall  and dark in complexion coupled with her athletic  figure . Angelle Burrus (nee Udo)  looks every inch  like her late  father , Dele Udo which convinces  you that she is truly the daughter of the late Nigeria Sprinter who was killed by a police officer in Nigeria at Ojuelegba  in 1981.

She introduced herself   ”My name is Angelle  Burrus (Nee  Udo) .  I am 37 years old, please I want to come to Nigeria to locate  my siblings and see where my father, Ndubuisi  Dele Udo was buried”. These were the words of the only child of the late Nigerian athlete, Ndubuisi  Dele  Udo.

Burrus  is a graduate  of Communications but chose Interior decoration as a profession. She lives in St Louis, Missouri in the United States of America. She is not happy as the thought of her late father,  and how she can reach out to her  father’s family members run in her mind   daily . She with frowned face and from her  shaky voice   revealed  her pains  and sorrows as  she betrayed emotions and   brought out her phone and showed her father’s picture to this writer. ”Look , this is my father’s picture.  I carry his picture about and I am very proud of him  but painfully I don’t know any of his siblings and I want to know where he was buried.  I am pained, I don’t know my father and I find it difficult to know my siblings ”, she said.

She spoke with total confidence a mother can be proud of , ” Whenever I look at the picture of my father and  look at myself from the mirror I know I look every inch like my father, I have his face, my mother  showed me his picture  and  I have  a lot of pictures and many articles and stories written about him”.

INFORMATION ABOUT MY FATHER

Asked what and how she got the information that her father was Dele Udo, she said ”I know. My mother told me she was pregnant  at the time  he was killed . She said she was about six or seven months  pregnant for my father  when he  was killed by a police officer  in Nigeria. My grandmother also told me   that my late father was   from Ibo tribe in Nigeria and that  his parents were killed during the Nigeria civil war. ”,  she said in a laden emotion , and added that she learnt that her  father had many siblings back home in Nigeria .

”I was told  that my father  was running  a   600 metres , he went to Nigeria in  1981 and what  I heard was that he was in  the car  with his friend and there  was altercation between his friend and the policeman, as my father was trying to mediate, the police man  shot him”, she said with voice laden with emotions. She spoke about her father’s friends , ” My late father had a lot of friends, according to my mother ,  and those  I know are Femi and Ajayi. We used to go to Femi’s house. Later we no longer hear or see him again. She said she no longer hear from her father’s friends again and the last time she called one of them, he did not pick her call again”

I AM MISSING MY  FATHER

Asked why she has not made effort to go to Nigeria since all these years, in response,  she shook her head, almost in tears and said ”I wish to go to Nigeria but I don’t know  where to go”

However, she said she felt  strong though she is missing him. She  said:   ”I am missing him of course, when I was 22 or 23  I wanted to go to Nigeria  to see where he was buried   but I felt the time was not the right time ”.

PLANNED TO JOIN FBI

 For Burrus, she is still angry against the killers of his father and had long time planned to get to the root of the killers not been brought to justice. She asked, ”Did they punish the killer of my father?  I used to be very sad about how he was killed and I didn’t hear anything   about the killer. I wanted to join FBI to know who killed my father, we didn’t hear anything whether  the police officer was jailed or killed. I wanted to find out”.  ”But” she added ” I did not join the FBI again. I thought of joining the FBI  when I had just left the College and looking for job”.

Burrus complained bitterly about the injustice suffered. She said  killing innocent people is not peculiar to Nigeria alone as America too suffer similar   fate and the culprits go  unpunished , she said ”In 2014 one Mic  Brown was killed by the Police  in Missouri but the culprit was never brought to book till now , so it is painful”.

      MY MOM

What of her mother?, this reporter asked, while her reply  is ”My mother was very  proud of her husband and told me how. She lived in Missouri where she met my father. But it seems my mother is not interested in  looking for the family. My mom once went to Nigeria   and that was in the 80s, but since then  she has not been there again. I don’t know whether my mom will go along with me to Nigeria but I want to go”. Asked whether she is the only child of his father, she said ”Yes, I am the only child of the late Dele Udo.  So  far I learnt”

 ACCESS TO HIS KITS

Asked whether she met some of her father’s personal effects or memorabilia  but she quickly  said ”   I don’t have access to his things but I have a gold medal he kept. I saw his jacket but it  has become old and of no use”, she said looking straight .

Asked how  her marriage looked like without seeing her father taking her to the altar, she said ” I missed him during my wedding but my sister walked me  down to the altar.”

HOW DOES SHE REMEMBER HER FATHER?

For Burrus,  she has a lot of collections of newspaper  articles, stories and pictures published  on her late father, she said ”I have a lot of his collections of stories in my office.

In fact I have about 32 articles from different newspapers on him. And  anytime  I wake up and would look at the  mirror  everyday, I  know I look like him. I  would love to have his  tattoo on my  hands but  I didn’t.”

MY GROWING UP

For Burrus growing up was hell, from  home to the public as things were tough , she said  ”My mother was 18 when  her husband was  killed, later she remarried and had six children. She was affected as she took to alcoholism, then drugs because she became a widow at teenage. My mother, grandmother, aunties and cousins raised me. My mother could not afford to buy me pants, shoes. I was bullied also as people would say I am too dark, too tall or too skinny ”.

She said  she was once into Sports, when asked whether she is doing sports,  she said ”I was playing volley ball when I was told that my late father was running 600 meters and I should try it, but I couldn’t because I was told I could have started at age 9 so that my body would adjust to the system .So I stopped”

”I told my husband everything about myself., I told him how my father  was killed , and he said he would assist me coming to Nigeria with me , he has been to Africa before, he once went to Ethiopia and some African countries except Nigeria. Yes, he knew something is missing in me and he is ready to come to  Nigeria with me to know my siblings”. On whether she is afraid to come to Nigeria, her response was   ”No, I am not afraid, but I don’t know where  to go and anytime  I talk about going.   I am always told that it was not a good  time for me to go”.

WHAT WILL SHE DO SEEING THE GRAVE?

When the daughter and the only child of the late Sprinter was asked what  she would  do  when she sees  her   father’s grave, she  said ” I  would grab a handful of dust  ( earth) and bring it down here (America),”  adding ”In fact when I get to the graveside, I would talk to him (father) , tell him it’s nice to be home, take  the  picture of the place, drop  flowers  and clean the tombstone   if not cleaned and say’ hello, I’m here finally’. I hope   Nigerians would welcome me, and I will be happy. I  don’t know whether Nigerians will remember my father again , I know a lot of people don’t remember  him but I will make them to remember him”.

She said ”I’m married and my husband is from Riverside in California”.

Her message to Nigerians and Nigeria  is ”I am doing well, I will come and visit you to thank the family”.

All efforts to meet her mother, Angella Udo failed despite several calls, she refused to pick her phone.

However her daughter, Burrus said she (her mother)  does not always pick her phone, Burrus said ” please write my  story, since she does not want to talk. All I want is how to meet my  father’s  siblings and  see my father’s grave in Nigeria”, she pleaded.

Up  to the Dele Udo family. Any information about  the  family should be forwarded to this paper to link the family up with Burrus.

 THE MAN DELE UDO

Born as Dele  Ndbuisi  Udo  on  May 24, 1957. He was a Collegiate Champion at the University of Missouri in the 1970s, and competed in the   400 metres  at the 1980 Summer Olympics .

Udo came to Nigeria in 1981   but  was gunned down in July 1981 after having a clash with a police officer at Ojuelegba  in Lagos.

By the time of his death, he married  a wife in America . He was from Umuahia.