The Nation Newspaper

Tag: girl

  • Girl stabs brother to death over argument

    A 21-year-old girl, Omasan Ogbe, yesterday stabbed her teenage brother, Laju, to death during an argument over house chores.

    The incident occurred in Ugbuwangue, Warri, Delta State.

    It was learnt that Omasan asked Laju, who was the only son of the family, to do the dishes.

    The boy was said to have resisted, reminding his sister that he had fetched water and was tired.

    The argument was said to have resulted in a fight. Laju reportedly slammed the sister on the floor.

    He was said to have run to the back of their home, his sister wielding a kitchen knife behind him.

    Omasan allegedly stabbed Laju in the chest, when he caught up with him.

    A family source, who spoke in confidence, said: “He fell to the ground and started screaming for help. People rushed to the house to help the boy.”

    Laju was rushed to the Warri Central Hospital but he died because he lost a lot of blood.

    He was buried in front of his father’s house at Ugbuwangue.

    As the reality of her action dawned on her, Omasan was said to have attempted an escape.

    But she was apprehended by neighbours and handed over to the police.

    Attempts to speak with the children’s mother were unsuccessful.

    Their father was said to have died over 10 years ago.

    The woman was still in shock at the time of filing this report.

    Police spokesman Celestina Kalu, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), confirmed the teenager’s death.

    She said investigation had begun into the matter.

  • How we got back our girl, by Ajeleros

    How we got back our girl, by Ajeleros

    The Ajeleros, who were reunited with their kidnapped daughter, Olubunmi, on Monday night, spoke yesterday on her safe return.

    Mrs Toyin Ajelero, mother of the three-year-old girl, said the family did not pay a ransom for her.

    Bunmi was kidnapped from the Surulere Baptist Church in Lagos on Sunday. She was released in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital on Monday night.

    Mrs Ajelero said yesterday that Olubunmi is in good health.

    “She has been playing around with her siblings, jumping up and down. You know how it is reuniting with your family members. She is extremely happy to see her daddy who she is very close to,” she said.

    She thanked all for their support and prayers, especially members of Surulere Baptist Church.

    “I can’t thank people enough, the leaders of Surulere Baptist Church for standing by us all through; they are all wonderful people,” she said.

    Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer Olumuyiwa Adejobi said the girl was sighted in a church at Oke Sokori area of Abeokuta on Monday evening crying.

    The villagers, who were attracted by her cry, he said, informed Adigbe Divisional Police Headquarters, Abeokuta, that rescued her.

    The girl was first handed over to the Juvenile and Women Centre of the Police.

    Adejobi confirmed that the kidnappers demanded N300, 000 ransom for the girl, promising to drop her where the parents could find her.

    He said the girl was seen with a note bearing a Lagos pastor’s telephone number.

    According to Adejobi, the phone number was dropped ostensibly to help locate her after the criminals’ transaction with her family but the rescue effort terminated that. He said no ransom was paid, adding that the command recently rescued three babies who were kidnapped in other states.

    Adejobi said his Commissioner, Val Mtomchukwu, is planning to liaise with his counterpart in Lagos State on how to curb kidnapping.

    There was jubilation at Surulere Baptist Church on Ojuelegba Road on Monday when Mr Ajelero in a stripe shirt and cream trousers emerged with his daughter.

    He was accompanied by some church leaders, who accompanied him to Abeokuta where Olubunmi was found.

    Their praise songs attracted passersby.

    Mrs Ajelero could not control her emotion on sighting her daughter.

    She carried and hugged her.

    They went to the altar where special prayers were offered for the family.

  • Boy, 16, ‘defiles’ girl, two

    A 16-year-old boy, who allegedly defiled a two-year-old girl, was yesterday arraigned in an Apapa Magistrate’s Court in Lagos.

    The accused, who lives at Ijora Badia area in Lagos, is standing trial for child rape.

    The Prosecutor, Soji Ojaokomo, told the court that the accused committed the offence on April 16.

    Ojaokomo said the accused lured the girl into a lonely place when her mother went to get food for her.

    “The accused took the girl to an uncompleted building beside the house and defiled her. Her mother started looking for her child on her return and she asked her neighbour, who said she left the girl to play outside with other children.

    “The mother said while she was searching for her child, she heard her screaming from an uncompleted building beside the house.

    “When she got there, she saw the accused satisfying his carnal desires with the child,” he said.

    He said the offence contravened Section 137 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State.

    Magistrate Patrick Adekomaiya ordered that the case file should be forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for legal advice.

    The accused pleaded not guilty.

    The magistrate granted the accused N50, 000 bail with two sureties in the like sum and adjourned the case to May 5.

     

  • Girl, 3, kidnapped in church

    Girl, 3, kidnapped in church

    KIDNAPPERS struck in a Lagos church on Sunday snatching a three-year-old girl, Bunmi Ajelero, who was playing with her mates.

    She was released in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, last night after her parents paid a N300,000 ransom

    The kidnappers, it was learnt yesterday, pretended to be worshippers at the Surulere Baptist Church on 52/54 Ojuelegba Road, Surulere, Lagos.

    They were said to have lured the little girl away, with the promise of giving her Gala, a popular beef Sausage.

    The two men were said to have taken Bunmi away on a motorcycle through Nathan Street, Off Ojuelegba Road, Lagos.

    A child ran into the auditorium to alert the church leaders, but before they could come out, the kidnappers had gone.

    The girl later identified the kidnappers on the Close Circuit Television (CCTV).

    An usher simply identified as Mrs Adisa said she suspected, two women and a man who behaved queerly.

    The man, she said, “looked too serious; held the Bible tenaciously and read the programme booklet with utmost seriousness”.

    “I couldn’t suspect any evil intention from him since he was a new comer. When we were distributing packs, I gave the women and they demanded for his own unknown that he had already collected one.

    “I went outside to bring one for him, on returning, I saw him already with a pack sitting outside with the two women,” she said.

    The church gives new comers food pack.

    Bunmi’s mother Mrs Toyin Ajelero was distraught when The Nation met her in the church yesterday.

    She described the incident as shocking, adding that the CCTV showed the kidnapper told other children that he was going to buy Bunmi Gala.

    She said: “Ordinarily, Bunmi won’t follow a stranger but we thank God. We saw that he took Bunmi to the Okada that was waiting and rode off. The church leaders called the family; the father of the child, they brought all the children into the media room to see all the faces of the people at the English and Yoruba service. At the English service, the guy was figured in white shirt by one of the children; he was also figured at the Yoruba service in brown shirt.”

    Mrs Ajelero, who was at the Bible Guest House in Ilupeju, Lagos, when the incident occurred rushed down to Surulere on being informed.

    She said: “I was at the Bible Guest House, Ilupeju; that is where I serve God. The children came to church here with their father. The father is a member of the media crew, he was in a meeting in the media room after the service and the elder sister was upstairs in the children’s church, the brother too was with the choir for rehearsal.  We were to move into the new house we have just rented. So, I was just calling that where are you and how are we moving? My husband said we can’t move now because of what happened; but I didn’t understand. He cut the call. I called again about two hours later; I was just hot, troubled and sweating; my heart was heavy. When I called again to ask for the children, he said he left them with one of their aunties and I said ‘when are we moving,’ and he said ‘no we can’t move.’ I asked him ‘you said something happened the other time’ and he said ‘I shouldn’t worry that he will call back then he cut the called.’ Then I called the aunty whom he said he left them with and I asked her straight: Did anything happen in church today? She said ‘yes’. To who? ‘Is it to my husband or who? That one too said I will call you back and cut off the call. So, immediately, I rushed down here. I saw a crowd of people around. I came in here around 3pm. Though I was on the altar with a group of women, everybody praying and about 4:30pm, it was shown to me that a particular person said he is a kidnapper, that he called my reverend and that means the person used the church bulletin but my reverend is in Owerri, Imo State for the Nigeria Baptist Convention programme going on there. The reverend had to connect with Lagos, to tell them what he had just heard on the phone and that the person requested for the girl’s father’s phone number who is my husband. So, they had to send the number to him and he said he wants to be talking to the father of the child alone. After then, we waited for another number of hours; he called and put the phone on my daughter’s ear to speak with the father; a three-year-old-girl. She spoke with the father and the father said he asked her ‘how are you? And she said ‘she is not fine.’

    “Obviously, she has not seen her father because they are so close. Then the guy said that he will send a message that will tell him what to do; So, he called later that he was somewhere in Ibadan, Oyo State. He said he will tell them what to do between 10pm and 11pm. So, the deacon led everyone in prayers. They asked everybody to go home and thanked everyone, over 100 people who were with us. People who saw it on facebook and other social media just started coming. But at after 11pm, we were waiting outside the house and he finally spoke to my husband that if he asked for N5 million, would he have asked for too much? My husband said it is not too much because the life of his daughter is more than that. He said okay, ‘I don’t want to inconvenience you; what about N500, 000? He said because ‘they picked the child for me from a church; that is the second they are bringing for me from a church’ and that he doesn’t want God’s curse to be on him. He later said he should pay N300, 000. My husband said okay and he put the phone on the girl’s ear again; at that time the baby had calmed down and I am sure she had already accepted her fate, she must have known that something was wrong. But at that point, the father said he asked her at after 11pm that ‘are you okay? and she said ‘she is fine.’ She asked for the elderly ones; where is Dammy? The one she follows. Where is Tosin? The elderly one, that she wants to see them; then my husband called me from where I was crying that we should go and sleep. He promised to call back by 10am today (yesterday). He didn’t call at 10 but called at 11:11am and asked them to be coming to Abeokuta. Right now as I am talking, my husband is in Abeokuta with a group of other men of God from here with the church bus since morning. They have not been able to connect anybody there.”

  • Girl Guides chief seeks peaceful elections

    The Nigeria Girl Guides Association (NGGA), has lent a voice to the clarion call for free, fair and violent-free elections.

    This is contained in a statement signed by the association’s Chief Commissioner, Mrs Maria Goretti Sule.

    Mrs Sule, who was recently elected Chief Commissioner, described this period as critical and urged Nigerians to show great sense of commitment and patriotism.

    “I want to seize this opportunity to lend a voice to the appeal for a peaceful, free and fair elections as the electorates go to the pool come Saturday, March 28 for the presidential election and April 11 for the gubernatorial elections and others.

    “As Nigeria’s political space is fully charged with regards to the upcoming elections, we advocate peaceful and violent- free general polls.

    “We call on Nigerians to exercise their civic responsibility without going into violence, no matter how provoked.

    “In an event if any misunderstanding, our advise to the electorates is to be calm and let justice prevail, all in the benefit of our future leaders and the nation at large,” the statement said.

  • Girl, 18, arraigned for ‘theft’

    An 18-year-old girl, Mary Ogah, has been arraigned at an Ikeja Chief Magistrate court for allegedly stealing gold jewelries valued at N5 million.

    Ogah was arraigned before Chief Magistrate A. O. Komolafe.

    Assistant Superintendent of Police Eranus Nnamonu said the defendant and another at large conspired to commit the alleged offence last March 9, at Alausa Secretariat, Lagos.

    The prosecutor said gold jewelry valued at N5 million belonged to  Mrs. Folashade Ogunnaike.

    The offence is contrary and punishable under Section 409 and 285 of the Criminal Code, Laws of Lagos State of Nigeria 2011.

    Mrs. Komolafe granted the defendant bail for N1 million, with a deposit of N100,000 with two sureties, who must be a relation and a tax payer.

    She adjourned till March 30.

     

  • Man, 78, ‘defiles’ girl, six

    A 78-year-old man, Oji Nnachi, an indigene of Nkelu-Ezi, Ogwuma in Afikpo South Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, has been accused of defiling a six-year-old girl.

    The victim’s father, Nnachi  Ndukwe told our reporter that  his daughter’s private part was bleeding after the incident.

    He urged the police to investigate the matter and find out if the suspect transmitted diseases to the victim.

    Ndukwe blamed the alleged defilement to the absence of his wife, Ogechi, whom he said left him and married another man, subjecting him to the difficulty of taking care of his children.

    He said: “I returned from work and saw people in my compound. When I asked them what happened, they told me that my daughter had been defiled. Then I saw my daughter, bbleeding.

    “I don’t blame the man, I blame my wife who left me and married another man. Since then, my children have lacked proper care.”

    The suspect is said to have been arrested by the Afikpo South Police.

  • Labourer defiles master’s four-year-old girl

    A 27-year old labourer, Friday Nwiwe, has been arraigned before an Ebute-Meta Magistrate’s Court in Lagos for allegedly raping a four-year old girl.

    Nwiwe was said to have ‘defiled’ the Nursery two-pupil at her father’s house in Seme Border, near Badagry, Lagos.

    The Ebonyi state born defendant is said to be employee of the girl’s father.

    He was said to have had carnal knowledge of the girl four days after his employment.

    Nwiwe, was reported to have told the girl not to report the matter to her mother.

    The child sustained injuries in her private parts.

    Nwiwe, who pleaded guilty, said “I did not sleep with her; I only inserted my hand into her”.

    Prosecuting Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Etim Nkankuk told the court that the defendant committed an offence contrary to Section 134 of the criminal law of Lagos State.

    Magistrate Abolarinwa Olatunbosun fixed sentencing, for March 6.

  • Forget controversies I’m a good girl—HALIMA ABUBAKAR

    Forget controversies I’m a good girl—HALIMA ABUBAKAR

    Nollywood actress, Halima Abubakar, is one of Nigeria’s finest acting talents. Having spent over a decade in the industry, she has grown a large fan base over the years and has received national and international recognition for her work. The Kogi State-born actress shares her passion with Adetutu Audu

    YOU have really had your fair share of controversies; people would have expected you to go under, going by all the scandals.

    Some people would have built ten houses out of those controversies. Well, I don’t know if I am controversial. I am a very good girl. I don’t set out to bring controversy to myself. I just go about my life in a normal way. If you think that is controversial, I don’t have anything to say to that.

    You are also crazy about tattoos. Apart from your chest region, where else do you have the tattoo?

    A couple of places. I am sure you don’t want to find out.

    How impactful would you say you have been in the industry?

    Of course I am treasured; my contribution is highly felt. You can ask my president and my fans can tell. I have contributed in discovering a lot of stars, we don’t need to go into the details because we all know, and I don’t need to be the highest paid actress to know that you have touched lives but knowing that you have is a joy you have within, I can’t share it.

    You are passionate about charity. Why?

    Halima Abubakar Foundation for the poor. Actually, it focuses on people that don’t have food. My concern is that a lot of people are hungry, so aside from giving them money, we can buy a bag of rice and share it to them. Food and water generally is my interest because I was hungry once, so I know a lot of people are hungry too.

    Your family was affected by the Boko Haram insurgency recently. How do you feel?

    I do not support any crisis from any angle at all. They have business with the government, not the individuals, so I think they lost focus of what they are doing.  I am still pained; my business and family were affected. We are just going to pray to God to keep guiding and protecting everyone.

    What is your most expensive fashion item?

    My wristwatches. I love wristwatches. And rings; I love rings. It’s amazing when you hear the amount some of these rings cost. I love accessories a lot.

    What dictates your dressing?

    I like being different. I want people to look at me and say “yes, she has a style”, even if it’s weird. I don’t have to come out wearing a mini skirt like every other person. I can’t come out wearing something that won’t allow me breath well in order for people to look at me and say, “oh, she’s a fashion icon.” I’d wear 16 colours if I choose to, as long as I’m happy about it. I love colours. Look around, there are always colours. See, I painted my house purple. I was almost going to paint the gate red but then people stopped me.

    How lucky have you been with your relationships?

    I have had very few relationships; I had a boyfriend that died in 2003, and after that I think I have been in two solid relationships. People might say that it is a lie, but if anybody knows of any other one, he or she should come out and say it. I have had only two relationships, and I realise that these days people are getting headaches over when I will marry and all that, are they going to live with me when I get married? Are they going to put food on my table when I get married? Will they come and live with us? So, I won’t get married because of what people are saying. Some of them don’t even have a relationship. They just hate us because we are actresses; is it our fault? So, you don’t bring your frustrations into my own name. Most of the rumours on the internet are all lies. Some don’t even read the interviews before they comment; when they just see someone’s name, they just scroll down to the comment, and they don’t even know what you are saying on the internet.

    Do these things get to you?

    No, there are things that I do that I would appreciate a commendation, but people don’t do that. You find out that the good things you do, people don’t read about them; what they want to read about is an actress dating this and that, an actress smoking. When you say this person is doing charity, they don’t get to highlight that. They highlight the rumours they hear, and not what they see or know. If they don’t see pictures, they complain; when they see, they say you are advertising what you are doing. So I have given up on convincing people, I’ll keep on doing what I want to do and forget about what people think. I see a lot of people fighting over my age, and it is silly, because at this time people don’t lie about age. How old was I, when I came in, how old am I now? People say Halima should keep quiet; she is older than she is claiming.

    You hugged stardom with a picture baring your cleavages. How do you feel looking back now?

    It was just an advert; a picture I took for a laundering company advert. It was just an audition picture where I was wearing a bikini. Back then, it was big deal in our society, but nowadays, it’s a common thing, because ladies put pictures like that on their DP and nothing happens. I actually did not know the press was aware of the picture in Lagos because I spent most of my time in Kano then and those magazines hardly circulate in Kano. It was my father who saw the write-ups and you can guess what that would have meant for me. Funny enough, I ended up not getting the job for which I snapped the picture because of the controversy that surrounded it. It got to the level that people were using the opportunity to ask me to do nude scenes in the movies. Many producers were now writing scripts based on nudeness for me but I refused. I knew if I started that trend at that point in time, I won’t go back. I have seen one or two movies that people are becoming daring and all that. I just look back and laugh when I think about all the things I have gone through in life.

    Would you say it affected your career?

    Oh yes, it did. A lot of producers didn’t want to work with me. They used to see me as a very decent quiet girl. For them to see those pictures, it was very shocking to them. It took me some years to convince them that I can act very well. I am not all about snapping pictures and modelling. I am still trying to convince some of them. I refused to quit the industry, like I told you before. That consistency sort of helped me out. I have built relationships again.

    Where did you develop your passion for acting, knowing that most people from your religious background would not?

    I started acting when I was in my teens. The awareness then was not that much. People didn’t really know much about movies up north then. It was after the millennium that people started taking note of the movie industry. In short, when I started, I didn’t have a problem until people started making a big issue out of nothing; even things that should not elicit any reaction. But because of the way those things were blown out of proportion, people were forced to take note and that brought controversies and bad comments from people. Basically, I don’t think it is a problem. When you are given a job to do, I guess you are supposed to do it very well.

    So how has the journey been so far?

    It’s been rough but we thank God; at least I’m still here to tell the story. I’m very grateful for all the decisions I’ve taken, the struggles, the pain, the rejection, but I’m glad I went through all that because I appreciate it more.

    What lessons have you learnt over the years?

    That things are not as easy as people make you believe and to be good to people. Consistency, prayer and being focused. Focus is the main thing

    Which is your most memorable movie so far?

    I can’t choose because they all define me at the end of the day. Choosing one particular one won’t be fair to the other producers.

  • Mary Slessor meets girl bomber

    Mary Slessor meets girl bomber

    When Mary Slessor visited this part of the world exactly 100 years ago, the killing of twins scandalised her missionary soul. Locals thought them a taboo. Twins sprang from the bad spirits in the ether world. So, slaughtering them did not amount to barbarism. Rather it freed their cultural consciences. Mary Slessor may have seen the killers in the light of Apostle Paul’s words, that their “consciences were seared with hot iron.”

    But they did not hate the twins. They only feared them. The strange creatures were malformed dainties. They had to let them go. The culture wept when ogbanje’s slipped out of its own fingers. But the same culture exulted at the barbarity of its own hands that wrung twins to death.

    Mary Slessor did not judge them. They did not know what they did. Even in Achebe”s Things Fall Apart, the novelist only scratched the surface of the benighted act, and no one looked at that primitive era of infanticide with righteous horror. Culture defines morality, and when culture is dark, good can be evil. Like in the poem Paradise Lost. Poet John Milton paints Satan in magnificence as a brutish beauty. “All good to me is lost,” chants the devil in that epic opus.

    One hundred years after, the child still suffers in solitude. What will Mary Slessor think of the fate of the child today in Nigeria, especially the girl child? In the past half year, Boko Haram has hatched a new idea. Girl children are now deployed as bullets and bombs. They are no longer beauties but beasts. They haunt the innocent in the market, in the public square, on the populated streets, in churches. Young girls are innocents, but they are the scare of the adults and children and men. This is the height of perversion. They are like horror movies where girl children doom adults.

    But Mary Slessor would have mused on the savage irony of the day. Young girls roused a different odium a year ago. We frowned, including in this column, at the sexual perversion of girl-child marriages. A governor married a girl of about 13 years, and he tried to fetch justification from the constitution. We mourned the prevalence of VVF, the physical damage and the psychological trauma, of the big men crouching in sexual ecstasies over unformed female organs. Governors do it. Senators do it. Bankers do it. We moan it. But no one has stopped it.

    Mary Slessor would have campaigned against it. A moral heroine of that day, she changed a whole culture. Can a voice rise today to save the girl child up North? Mary Slessor had no Internet, or newspapers, or television, or the sort of bandwagon convulsion of the #bringbackourgirls movement. Yet she succeeded with the charisma of faith and majesty of moral suasion. Is this an age of irretrievable evil?

    It is justified falsely in the name of religion. The answer, we opined, is the brilliance of education. Reports have shown girls in revolt. Some run away into an uncertain world, but prefer the wilds of uncertain streets to the servitude of sexual tyranny. Others sulk to their hoary graves in sullen slavery.

    Now, while bemoaning this, we face another tyranny: the girl bomber. Last month, Zaharau, a 13-year-old, did not detonate her bomb in the Kanti Kwari Market in Kano. She disavowed the paradise of her so-called liberators and chose to live. Others have gone who obeyed.

    Is the girl child not an endangered species? In one case, we moan rape. In the other, we mourn their murder-suicides. Those who marry them see them metaphorically as bombshells, alluding to their physical charms. The others see them as bombshells. The Chibok girl saga still haunts a nation that looks with paralysis at the failure of a government to do something strong, or to even pursue even a symbolic story that could ease the pains of the loss. The president visited Maiduguri to mark the Army Day Memorial, but was it an act of empathy from a president? He has not up till now visited the town of the notorious abduction. Does the president’s visit assuage any conscience? Who would say the president’s visit was not cynical? He goes to Maiduguri one month to election at the same time CNN features the eerie testimonials of Nigerian soldiers who buy their own uniforms and cannot access drugs. They confess that Boko Haram soldiers have better weapons and are better motivated.

    In those circumstances, how would the Boko Haram fighters not raze down Baga town, and make away with the girls, and kill the men and recruit the boys? The greater evil is a government that fails its primary responsibility: security of its citizens. Foreign media have flayed President Goodluck Jonathan for condemning the attack on a French newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, while keeping mum over the massacre of Baga town that wipes the place out of the map.

    How are we sure these girl bombers are not being radicalised by the sect, and launched back at us as messengers of death? Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has terrorised many villages in Uganda and environs, and abducted hundreds of girls in the past decades. Some of the girls are stigmatised while others with children from rape and forced marriages are trapped forever. That is the prospect for the Chibok girls and others abducted. Zaharau’s case is another dimension. Her father decided to volunteer her for Boko Haram. This is another form of early marriage. Rather than force their 13-year-olds into marriages, they prefer apocalyptic paradise.

    By ceding their kids to the sect, they believe they have done good to the Almighty. Whether they are defiled sexually or strapped with bombs to die while killing others, the parents think they have done good to their souls and to the Almighty. The new defilement is bad. I don’t know which is worse though. Is it the girl who lives in psychic turmoil all her life in a forced marriage or the one who dies in meaningless martyrdom in the name of the Almighty? One a living dead, the other a dead living.

    This tragedy happens only when a state fails. That is why the president’s visit only helped to worsen a sense of alienation in the beleaguered citizens in the Northeast. If President Jonathan had visited them often and done more symbolic acts, his empathy would have registered, but not a few days to elections.

    Essentially, to save the innocent girls, we must mount a campaign around the North to tell girls not to allow anyone strap any devices around their body. It is time to incite girls against murderous parents. These girls are too young to know what is happening to them in the name of religion.

    Let us do what Mary Slessor would have done. Let us save the girl child. Girls are the mothers who fashion families that make cultures. It is one of the great tasks of this generation.