Grandson of immediate past Lagos State Commissioner for Rural Development Cornelius Ojelabi has been kidnapped.
Michael Oluwatomiyin Ojelabi, four, was kidnapped in front of his school by an unidentified woman six days ago.
His distraught parents are hopeful that he will return home.
In tears, they said they had not received any phone call about his whereabouts.
Sympathisers have been trooping to the Ojelabis’ Iyana School residence in Iba Local Council Development Area (LCDA) of the state.
Members of their church held prayers for the boy’s return yesterday.
The boy’s father, Sunday Ojelabi, told The Nation that Michael and his sister, Oyindamola, were standing at their school gate, waiting for their mother, when the woman, who gave her name as Aunt Joy, said she was asked to bring them home.
“I was shocked when my eight-year-old daughter told me her class teacher asked her to sweep her classroom. The teacher denied but three of my daughter’s friends said it was true. It was when she finished sweeping she took her brother to the school gate. Oyindamola told me that when they got to the gate, the woman, whom she described as tall, fat and dark-skinned, said my wife asked her to pick them. My daughter said she wasn’t going to release her brother but the woman asked her to inform her class teacher she had taken Michael. When she got back, they were nowhere to be found.
“She went home to inform my wife and when they returned to the scene, shop owners said they saw the woman on a motorcycle but they didn’t know she was a kidnapper. We went to Ojo police station. We have been searching for him. I believe we will find him by God’s grace because I suspect nobody,” he said.
Ojelabi said when he got the information, he reported the case to Adoff Police Station. He has also written a statement at the Ojo Police Station.
He said: “My wife is a trader and she takes them to school every morning. The reason she was late to pick them on that day was because she was preparing their lunch. She didn’t want them to return home without having anything to eat.”
When asked his last moment with his son that day, Ojelabi said: “I was getting dressed for work when he came to my room and said ‘daddy, good morning’. I replied ‘good morning’ and said I was off to work. He is my close paddy. I miss him these past few days because he was always awake whenever I returned from work. I keep thinking of my son’s condition. I keep thinking if he will be given his favourite biscuit and tea. We have been living in this environment for over 16 years and we have never witnessed incidents as this.”
Michael’s mother, Mrs Elizabeth Ojelabi, was said to have gone to the church.
The school’s head teacher, Olalekan Kazeem, said he was still in shock adding that the class teacher said she never asked Oyindamola to sweep.
“We are security conscious here because I remember there was a time their father was not allowed to take his children because he wasn’t a familiar face in the school. I pray we find him because that is our joy,” he said.
The Ojelabis are pleading with the public for information on their boy’s whereabouts.
They can be contacted on: 08024371127, 08028287574.
