• Experts reveal why they are turning into monsters
On a fateful day at a wryly coloured bungalow in Awawu, Mushin, Lagos, Toyin Aribilola, mother of a six-month-old baby, had just finished her household chores. She decided to have a nap, but she was barely asleep when some frantic knocks on the door in the next compound jolted her back to life. A man who had photographed her neigbour’s nine-month-old baby had turned up with copies of the photoraphs but his repeated knocks on the neigbour’s door were not responded to. Aware that her neigbour had left her baby in the care of a maid in the house, she was surprised that the knocks on the door would not wake up 17-year-old Esther hired from Benin Republic.
Getting into the house, she found Esther lying on the bed with the baby covered up beside her. Removing the wrapper around the baby, the sight that confronted Aribilola shook her to the marrow. “Jesus!” she exclaimed as other persons rallied around her. Little Seun lay lifeless on the bed with his head severed. Esther, the maid, had also sustained some injuries from trying to maul herself with a knife after she killed Baby Seun. Esther gave no reason for her actions, while Aribilola and other neigbours ended up spending three days in police cell.
Although the sordid incident occurred in 1979, the gory details have not been erased from her mind almost four decades after, even as she narrated the story to The Nation.
“I’ve never contemplated hiring a maid since then. I raised my six children without an extra hand, but it was tough. I advised my children never to hire a house help if they want to have a happy home. It is the same for female and male house helps. A larger percentage of them are evil,” she said, fixing her gaze on her android phone as if in a bid to distract herself from the memory of that day.
Broken skull, rotten body, kidnapped kids and other stories
The story of domestic servants who turn around to hurt their employers have continued to make the rounds. Early in the year, Mistura Sikiru, a civil servant who teaches in a secondary school in Lagos, was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja. Susan Samson, an 18-year-old maid who was employed less than a month earlier had smashed a bottle of wine on Mistura’s head after bathing her with blended pepper. Mistura had suspected the Cross River-born maid of stealing money from her bag and had called to inform her agent. She then locked the door and waited for the agent to come. But in a desperate bid to escape from the house, Samson poured blended pepper on Mistura while she laid on the bed. Not done, she grabbed a champagne bottle and smashed it on Mistura’s head repeatedly until she passed out. It was Mistura’s cry for help that attracted residents who rushed into the house to apprehend her attacker.
Not many will forget the kidnap case involving the Orekoya kids—three children kidnapped from their Surulere home by Funmilayo, a maid hired through an online business site, OLX. Unknown to the family, Funmilayo was running a kidnaping ring in collaboration with her husband. She kidnapped the three children a day after she was hired and kept them in a Lagos suburb before the hand of the law caught up with her.
Sometimes when evil domestic servants strike, their victims may not be alive to tell the story. The gruesome murder of Prof. Albert Ilemobade, a former Vice-Chancellor of Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA) is a case in point. Ilemobade,
lifeless body was found decomposing inside the garage in his Ijapo Estate home in Akure, was killed by two of his domestic workers—Olayemi Bamitale, his former driver, and Daniel Ita, the security guard. The duo had called him into the compound and strangled him to death after making a false claim about a fire alarm. They later admitted to committing the offence with the aim of stealing Ilemobade’s recently purchased Toyota RAV 4 SUV. His lifeless body was then dropped at the store near the car park so that people would not see it.
In some other cases, housemaids have been known to deliberately add poison to their employers’ meals. One of such instances, which happened in Ondo, had a 14-year-old housemaid as the mastermind. According to the statement written by her employer, Alhaji Nasiru Akinlosotu, the teenager was asked to cook beans for the family but she added rat poison to Akinlosotu’s portion. While eating the beans, Akinlosotu sensed that the food had a strange taste and an offensive odour. He vomited the little he had swallowed and asked the maid about the content of the food.
“It was in the course of interrogation by our neighbour that the maid confessed that she put rat poison in my own share of the food. She also confessed that she decided to add poison to my food because I beat her any time she committed an offence in the house.”
In a bid to gain unfettered access into the inner rooms of their employers to steal jewelry and cash from their Lekki residence, Victor Hounkpe and David Amusu, two cooks from Benin Republic, conspired to poison their employers’ meals with a sleep-inducing substance.
Hounkpe, who committed the offence few days after he was employed, had prepared a pot of vegetable soup for the family and served the food for dinner. A few minutes later, Chinaka Nwogu, the employer, complained of stomach upset and was rushed to the hospital by his wife. The wife also began to complain of severe stomach ache and eventually collapsed at the hospital gate.
Hounkpe was later apprehended by operatives of the Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI), Panti, Yaba, Lagos, and he confessed to putting some substances in the food, adding that David Amusu, the former cook who recommended him to his employers, gave him the substance and also told him how to administer it. His role was to open the door for Amusu and other members of the gang. The victims, Chinaka Nwogu and his wife, Omowunmi, had to be transferred to a hospital outside the country for emergency treatment. Apart from the couple, two domestic staff who also ate from the vegetable soup became unconscious and were hospitalised.
An unheard true life story
Misdeeds by housemaids have become so rife in the society that not many make it to the pages of newspapers. The Nationspoke with some people who also had bitter tales to share. One of them, a 32-year-old lady, who wants her identity concealed, narrated how a maid hired to care for her bedridden mother turned out not to only maltreat the woman but also steal from the household.
She said: “We needed a nanny to stay with her from 7 am to 6 pm. So we employed a 36-year-old woman. Initially, we were happy with her service because she was good at changing Mama’s diaper and arranging her bed. Although she takes care of Mama and plays with her when I was around, I began to have reservations about her in my spirit. I noticed that my money started getting missing. Other people in the house also made similar observations.
“There was a day my elder brother’s wife and I were going out and she dropped her bag in the sitting room. By the time we got to our destination, we realised that money had been stolen from the bag. It happened the second and third time. That was when we decided to confront her. She still did not own up until she was caught red handed on a Thursday morning while trying to steal money from my mother’s bag.
“The victim decided to set up a camera in the house when she noticed that Mama was not sleeping well. The footage later showed that the maid was not only stealing money, she was also maltreating the ailing woman, threatening to deal with her if she dared to report that she was pilfering things from the house.
“She also stole my jewelries and my mum’s provisions. Though I paid her the minimum wage, I still bought things for her. She handled my mum so roughly that the poor woman who had stroke hit her leg on something and the wound did not heal until after a month, leaving a scar.
“The most surprising thing was that even when she was caught, she was not sober. It was only when we got to the police station that she admitted her fault and pleaded for leniency.”
An industry in need of monitoring
Asked about the reason for the rise in violence from domestic servants, Betty Abah, the Executive Director, Centre for Children’s Health Education, Orientation and Protection, said the monstrosity of many house helps is system-induced.
Abah said: “Many of them, especially those who started as very little children, grew up in a system where they are never shown any love and never regarded as fellow humans within the circles of families they are sent to work.
“Many are physically brutalised, emotionally traumatised, sexually abused, and generally treated as disposables. With time, they become monsters unable to offer love to anyone they encounter and sometimes unable to receive love also.”
Calling for stringent regulations in the process of employing house helps, she offered that the misdeeds could be prevented if house helps are conscious of the fact that resorting to impunity may land them in prison or shut the doors against future employment.
“If they are blacklisted, then they would be careful. And that is if there is detailed profiling. But sadly, that is hardly the case,” she lamented.
Assessing the issue from the gender perspective, Olabisi Aina, a professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, said gender roles play a part in the spate of violence recorded among domestic servants within the country.
Aina said: “You should not be a woman or have female children and you want to employ a male as house help. Sex roles also affect the way domestic servants think. When you have a male mopping the floor, bathing the children and doing other things that tradition assigns to woman, he may start growing resentment and could lash out the frustration on the employer or her children,” Aina opined.
To mitigate the trend, Aina further admonished that the Nigerian government should regulate the sector by keying into the United Nations 189 convention for domestic workers. The convention, which has been ratified by 25 countries in the world with only Guinea and South Africa from the African continent, stipulates that a minimum age should be set for entry into domestic service.
Articles of the convention also advance the concept of countries taking measures to ensure work performed by domestic workers under the age of 18 and above the minimum age of employment does not deprive them of compulsory education or interfere with opportunities to participate in further education or vocational training.
Other requirements of the convention include ensuring that domestic workers enjoy effective protection against all forms of harassment and violence as well as decent working conditions and respect for their privacy should they reside in the household.
A change in perception
Speaking on viable solutions to the problems of misdemeanor by domestic servants, Prof. Aina said perception has to change about how services provided by domestic service are viewed and appreciated.
She said: “The U.N Domestic Servant Convention 189 is a global phenomenon and people have accepted it. Regulating the sector is critical since domestic service also contributes to the economy. These people play a critical role and it is important to value the service they render. We have to see what they do as decent work. It will affect their mental state and they will feel better about their job.”
She also called on government to put in place a social protection law which would ensure that youths who are out of employment will not be forced into domestic work that may affect their mental well-being.
At both the state and federal levels, there is no agency in Nigeria regulating the profiling of domestic servants in the country. This has left some gaps, some of which have resulted in irreparable losses and untold hardship.
Only recently, the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mr Mudashiru Obasa, said profiling of house helps will help to ensure they are traceable when they get involved in child abuse or criminal tendencies.
Obasa, who said this at the Public Hearing on a Bill for a Law for the Registration of Domestic Staff Service Providers in Lagos State and for other Connected Purposes, said the objective of the proposed law is to register domestic staff service providers operating in Lagos State.
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“The services of all domestic staff, be it house helps, drivers, gardeners, security men or others, are quite germane. The bill will also outlaw hiring of underage as domestic staff,” Obasa said.
Also, Mrs Adefunmilayo Tejuosho, the Chairman, House Ad hoc Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights, Public Petitions and Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC), affirmed that the bill was essential to make homes safe.
“There is no way a man or woman can provide the best service at the workplace if their homes are not in safe hands. This bill is very germane,” she said.
