By Oluwatoyin Malik
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 of 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 micro finance banks she was owing 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).
Nigerian Tribune learnt that it was the woman’s husband, Nureni Rasaq, who lodged a report at Sango divisional headquarters that she left for Lagos on of 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 micro finance 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 loan from different micro finance 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 micro finance banks.
“Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t pay back the last loan which amounted to about N150,000. I had 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 there everyday. 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 the pictures of some children who she said she and other women had helped their mothers to care for to ease their sufferings. I believed them because I was seeing them there everyday.
“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 in 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 police station to lodge a complaint. When I called them in the presence of 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.”
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