Other Children Kidnapping before the Ese Ororu story

‎ Beyond Ese, cases of forced marriages, and abduction of teenagers, among others, abound in the country.‎ Wasila Taisu In 2014, the name of 15-year-old Wasila Taisu, from Unguwar Yansoro, Kano State, made it to the papers for one of the most unusual things a girl of her age could be popular for – murder. Taisu appeared in court charged with killing her 35-year-old husband, Umaru Sani. According to the police, Taisu admitted to killing her husband and three of his friends by lacing a meal with rat poison because she did not love Sani, but was forcibly married to him. Taisu reportedly told her lawyer, Hussaina Ibrahim, that she had been tied to the bed and raped by Sani on their wedding night. The child bride poisoned her husband only 17 days after the wedding. In May 2015, the prosecution dropped the murder charge against the teenager. Zainab Usman At 13, Zainab, from Kwassaw village in Zamfara State, had at least two suitors who had approached her father for her hand in marriage. However, Zainab’s father, Ibrahim Kanuma, considered one of the suitors, a 63-year-old at that time, to be too old. So he settled for his friend, a 40-year-old man. Zainab resisted and chose to stay in school. She is now a child rights activist. Maimuna Abdullahi In June 2014, Maimuna Abdullahi from Kaduna State was still 14 years old when she was given out in marriage to Mahammadu Saidu, who abused her, locked her away and engaged her in hard labour. When she ran home, she was beaten, first by her father, then her husband, who later summarily divorced her for daring to run away. Maimuna was left to suffer, uncared for several weeks before the Founder of the Tattalli Free School, Saadatu Aliyu, took her in and gave her a new life. Maimuna Abdulmunini In 2007, four years after the passage of the Child Rights Act, the police arrested and arraigned 13-year-old Maimuna Abdulmunini for killing her 35-year-old husband. She allegedly burnt the man to death because she was forced to marry him. The case dragged on till Maimuna became 18 in 2012. Then she was convicted for murder and sentenced to death. In 2014, a court ruled that the death sentence was a violation of the teenager’s rights. Kidnap of the Orekoya kids One of the most shocking stories of 2015 happened in Lagos in April. A nanny, employed by Mr. and Mrs. Leke Orekoya, via online sales portal, OLX, kidnapped three of their children only two days after resuming work. More shocking was the fact that one of them was just a baby; they were aged 11 months, four and six. The abductors demanded N13m as ransom for the children. Fortunately, for the Orekoyas, the police rescued the children a week later as well as arrested the nanny. It turned out that the nanny, who told her employees that her name was Mary Adebiyi, was actually Funmilayo Adeyemi, a member of a kidnap syndicate. Adeyemi confessed that she was the mastermind of the crime and that she orchestrated the kidnap of two boys in 2014. Adeyemi was in the syndicate with her husband, her brother in-law and wife, while her mother-in-law was also involved in the abduction of the Orekoya kids. Felicia Destiny and Esther Wisdom’s ordeal In January 2011, seven-year-old Felicia Destiny was abducted at Okpekpe in the Etsako East Local Government Area of Edo State by a herbalist, Emmanuel Akpan-Okon. Akpan-Okon also abducted Esther Wisdom and turned both girls into sex slaves. It was not until November 2015 when both girls were 11 that the police rescued them. “I never believed I would see my daughter again. I almost died when she was kidnapped in 2011. I am very happy to see her again. I thank the Cross River Police command for rescuing my daughter from the hands of her captor,” Felicia’s mother said after reuniting with her daughter. Lagos female students kidnapped The latest abduction happened on Monday night in Lagos and it involved violence. Gunmen stormed the Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary in the Ikorodu area of Lagos and seized three schoolgirls. A visit by the Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Zone 2 Command, Bala Hassan; Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Fatai Owoseni, as well as a helicopter search of the school’s vicinity has yet to bring solace to the parents of the abducted pupils. Meanwhile, Hassan has assured parents of the children that security operatives would do everything possible to rescue them. “The important thing is to rescue them (and get them) safely back to their parents. It may take a couple of days and it may even be today. We are still going to the offices to do one or two things that will facilitate the recovery of these children. “For now, we want to keep the identities of the children to our chest and see what we can do today, tomorrow. I want to assure you that the security forces are on top of the situation,” he said. Mrs. Ushie’s heartache In September, a man in his 20s was introduced to a fashion designer, Mrs. Ushie, in Boundary, Ajegunle, Lagos. The young man wanted to become her apprentice and paid the N5,000 she requested for the training. Four days after he resumed, the boy she knew only as Ayomide disappeared with her two-year-old son, David Ushie. She had left her son in Ayomide’s care for a short while, returning to find the boy missing. Calls to his numbers yielded no results and she had no clue where he lived. As of December, neither her son nor the apprentice had been found. The church as den of rituals Around 6am on June 25, 2014, Mrs. Gloria Emeka, who resided in the Ogolonto area of Lagos, raised the alarm that she could not find her seven-year-old son. Her neighbours rallied round her and went in search of the boy she had sent to fetch water from a well earlier. Among the neighbours who joined the search was Mrs. Rosemary Chukwu, who showed great concern about the development. Two people even went down the well to ensure that the boy did not fall in. Chukwu eventually left the search party, informing the neighbours that she had a luggage to deliver, promising to join the search afterwards. She emerged later with a large box on her head and went on her way. As she passed, a suspicious woman urged the neighbours to search the box. When they attempted to do that, she took off. So, when she was caught the boy was found gagged, but alive in the box. Chukwu, known as a prayer warrior in the neighbourhood, was a ritualist and she was allegedly said to be taking the boy to the pastor of a church. The event, no doubt, brought out the other side of the church as a ritualists’ den. At the church and to the shock of many across the country, eight frail men and women were found shackled and rescued. One of them had been in captivity in the church since 2012. 10. Chibok girls The story of the Chibok girls is in a class of its own. Nigeria has not recovered from it. In fact, many have concluded that the victims and their parents may never recover from trauma accompanying the abduction. On April 15, 2014, reports came from insurgency-battered Borno State that more than 200 schoolgirls had been abducted from their hostels in Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok. Though the military responded and arrived at the school, what they met was the charred remains of the school, and wailing and heartbroken parents and pupils. Boko Haram had gone beyond madness and given a horrified world one of its most shocking and embarrassing cases of kidnapping involving children in recent memory. Two days after the abduction, the Nigerian military had announced that all but eight of the girls had been freed, but parents and officials of the schools insisted that only 20 of the missing girls had escaped from the kidnappers and returned to their homes. This had forced the military to retract their statements about the rescue. The girls’ abduction and the shocking negligence displayed by the Federal Government generated global attention and a year later played a crucial role in the ouster of the former President Goodluck Jonathan, who was blamed for responding late to the distress call. Two years on, the girls have yet to be found.‎