A 33-year-old nursing mother, Olaide Adekunle, suspected to have sold her 18-month-old daughter to buyers, has said that she was not involved in such an act as she was still breastfeeding when the baby was cunningly taken away.
She said that she was deceived by child
traffickers into believing they were helping her to care for her daughter and
keep her from the sun whenever she was hawking drinks and sachet water for
survival and to repay the loan she had defaulted in paying.
She also spoke about how she left her abode
in Ifo, Ogun State, and went to Igando in Lagos State to escape pressures from
the microfinance banks she was owed and to make enough money from hawking
drinks to pay back the loan.
Sorrowful, the nursing mother said that the
people who offered her help to care for her baby nearby while she was hustling
were godsend, and were acting as is custom among Nigerians and Africans.
Adekunle was arrested by Ogun State Police
Command for allegedly being complicit with those who absconded with her baby as
she was paid N600,000, albeit surreptitiously, by the yet-to-be-identified
buyer(s).
It was gathered that the
woman’s husband, Nureni Rasaq, who lodged a report at Sango divisional
headquarters that she left for Lagos on March 15 with their daughter,
Moridiat, but came back home without her.
According to the command’s Police Public
Relations Officer, SP Abimbola Oyeyemi, the report made the Divisional Police
Officer, Sango Division, CSP Dahiru Saleh, to invite the nursing mother.
On interrogation, she spoke about how debts
she owed microfinance banks took her to Lagos, where she started hawking to
get money to pay back until a man came and linked her with a woman to assist
her in caring for to her daughter while hustling.
She further told the police that the woman
she was introduced to gave her N600,000, which she said she didn’t know was
being used to buy the child.
The PPRO said that the acting Commissioner of
Police in the state, DCP Babakura Muhammed, had directed that the woman be
transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department for further
investigation and possible recovery of the baby.
In an interview with the Nigerian Tribune,
the distraught mother, who hailed from Igboora in Oyo State, narrated her life
situation and the event that led to the stealing of her daughter thus: “My
mother died when I was very young. I used to hawk drinks and sachet water for
survival. I had a first marriage in which I gave birth to three children but
one of them died. When we separated, my ex-husband kept our son while my
daughter stays with my sister.
“My second man and I got together and had a
daughter. She is one and a half years old now. He is a tricycle driver.
“We were living in Ifo but I left for Igando
to stay with my father when things were tough. My man used to beat me so much.
Also, to have money to buy drinks for sale, I used to obtain loans from
different microfinance banks. The agreement was that as I would borrow at the
beginning of a month, I would be making a daily return of the loan in parts, to
be completed by the end of the month. I was borrowing from five different microfinance banks.
“Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t pay back
the last loan which amounted to about N150,000. I used about five people as
my guarantors to take the loan. The banks started dragging me for repayment.
This, coupled with the way my husband was constantly battering me, telling me
to go to Igando to hawk drinks so that I would be able to gather enough money
to repay the loan, made me to go there.
“It was in Igando that I met a man called
Damilare. He used to sit at BRT park in Igando and had seen me when I was
selling drinks to commuters plying the road. I thought he was a conductor of a
commercial bus. He pitied the way I used to straddle my daughter on my back
while hawking in the sun. He asked me for the reason I was suffering so much,
telling me he had people who would help me. I explained to him about the
default in loan payment which brought me to the state, and the fact my father
was even telling me to leave his house and go back to my husband.
“When he told me he was ready to tell some
people to help me, and that my suffering would end, I was so elated. I believed
that God would not come down but would send helpers in human form. I did not
know the evil plan he and his accomplices had for me. He gave me his phone
number and said he would take me to his sister, which he did. We met her
outside General Hospital, Igando, with another woman.
The ‘sister’ and the other woman also used to
go inside the premises of the hospital. I was told by Damilare that they had
worked there as nurses in the past but were not working at that time. They used
to hang out there every day. The woman said she would not like me hawking in the sun
with my daughter, offering to be helping me to carry her whenever I was selling
in the traffic. She showed me pictures of some children who she said she
and other women had helped their mothers care for to ease their sufferings.
I believed them because I was seeing them there every day.
“We started this and she used to buy things
for my daughter. She would bring her to me whenever I was done with selling.
One day, she called me and gave N5,000, asking me to go and open a bank
account. I had an account with an old-generation bank and got another one with a
new-generation bank. When I did, I told the woman and Damilare’s ‘sister’. Then
they said that they would give me some money to save so that I would not hawk
again but have enough to take care of myself. At first, they sent N300,000 to
one of the banks, before sending another to the second one which I thought was
also N300,000 which they claimed to have done. It was after the incident that
my statement of account showed that they sent N270,000 the second time. I
didn’t know that they wanted to exchange my daughter for money.
“On the day they would take her away, as
usual, two of the women came to me. One of them was Yoruba and the one Igbo.
They said they wanted to buy things for my daughter and went away with her. I
did not foresee any danger. When i didn’t see them return with my child at the
usual time, I called them to ask why they were so late. They replied that they
were with my daughter and she was fine. I told them to bring her but didn’t
know they had taken her away. They never told me that they wanted to buy my
daughter.
How I discovered
When I waited in vain and they didn’t bring
back my daughter, I knew something had happened. I started crying and walked
round the hospital to check them, but I didn’t see them. The following day,
April 1, I waited at the bus stop at Iyana Ipaja to be on the lookout for them,
because they used to tell me sometimes that they were there with my daughter
when they started helping me to care for her. But my waiting was in vain. That
was why I called my husband and he took me to the police station to lodge a
complaint. When I called them in the presence of the police, they told me my child
was fine. I told them to bring her and they asked me to wait for them. I waited
with police officers for a long time but they never came.”
Tribune
إرسال تعليق