The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Traumatised

  • Agonising mothers and traumatised children

    It is cries of woe and unending agonies all over the place. Mothers running helter-skelter as they scamper into safety dragging their helpless children along with them. The images we see every day on our screens are distressing and the narratives that accompany such pictures are heart breaking. From Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Libya to Egypt to Pakistan and to the recurring Afghanistan is the same gory tale of bloodbath and bloodshed.

    Do people who created these unending agonies for mothers have mothers? Do the blood thirsty world leaders who torment mothers and children have mothers? Were they born by women? Do they have sisters, aunts, nieces and children? If they do not have biological children of their own don’t they see their neighbour’s children? Don’t they see chicks following their mothers?

    When you see the harrowing images of children being daily consumed by cholera in Yemen your heart almost bleeds for those innocent children who are being punished by their country’s selfish and senseless leaders who allowed the notorious CIA to plunge their country into Civil War. Fathers and mothers are not spared by this ravaging cholera that claims a life every two hours! To date 260,000 are reported to have succumbed to the ruthless cholera majority of the victims being children.

    The story of Mosul in Iraq is not different. Blood thirsty and vengeful George Bush woke up one day and thoughtlessly decided that Iraq, the cradle of human civilization must be destroyed. Stories upon stories were invented to deceive the usually ignorant citizens of the USA that President Saddam Hussein, created by the same USA, harboured Weapons of Mass Destruction. To start with the USA has the largest variety of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the world. In fact her own arsenal is larger than that of all the countries of the world combined. The USA has no moral right to question any country’s right to self-defence.

    Iraq before the unprovoked invasion by the USA had the fourth strongest military in the world according to military sources, and she also had one of the best living conditions in the world thanks to her oil money and the socialist policies of Saddam. Bombs upon bombs were ruthlessly emptied from the skies on that country and buildings, rare historical sites were destroyed. Throughout the campaign of bloodletting, mothers and their children went through hell. Hundreds of thousands of children were killed; thousands of women were gang-raped while some had their husbands slaughtered right in their presence. Such was the terrible plight of mothers and children throughout the brutal campaign which continued for several years after the cessation of hostilities. But the war sprang up again with the emergence of ISIS also a creation of the CIA and mothers and their children once again came under the hammer.

    What a horrible sight to behold in Mosul the so-called stronghold of ISIS which was destroyed beyond recognition. However hardened a heart may be, it would melt if confronted with the human tragedy of Mosul. Buildings where mothers and children sought refuge kept tumbling down on their heads killing hundreds and inflicting life threatening injuries on many. Hospitals were destroyed and mothers watched their children die slow painful death due to lack of health care delivery services. Malnutrition and starvation has taken over in Mosul.

    Libya is a sorry tale. That oil rich country had the highest and best living standard in the whole of Africa in Gadhafi’s time. But Gadhafi committed the same ‘sin’ Saddam committed by asking to end the monopoly of the US Dollar as the standard currency of trade. The CIA raised an opposition against him; armed the opposition to the teeth and Barack Hussein Obama completed the dirty and inhuman job by assembling the so-called allies to rain tons of bombs on the beautiful country until every treasure was completely destroyed. In all of these, it is the women and children who suffered the brunt. You can imagine children who hitherto were well fed, mothers who received the best care from their government now scavenging for food in dustbins!! Hundreds of thousands of both Iraq and Libya women are now widows while their children are exposed to a blank and hopeless future.

    It is the same story in Syria where a once powerful and prosperous country is being reduced to rubbles because of the crazy policy of regime change which has been the bane of the US policy since time immemorial. Children and mothers in Syria are a sorry sight as they keep running from one refugee camp to another. A huge number of Syrians now form the bulk of refugees worldwide suffering humiliation and outright rejection in some countries.

    Afghanistan has been serially unlucky. She was for many years the punching bag of the Cold War between USSR and USA. The Taliban took over and the ubiquitous USA believed it was their birth-right to export suffering, humongous suffering to the mothers and children of the God-forsaken country. Women and children of Afghanistan have not known peace in decades. Their woes have also taken root in Pakistan where suicide bombing is a daily occurrence.

    Palestine is in a class of her own. It will be 70 years next year when some Palestinians have been living in refugee camps! Just imagine a life in refugee camp and imagine raising children in such deplorable environment for 70 years!!!

    All the conditions we have been talking about were created by human beings; heartless leaders who stumbled on power and did not know what to do with it. Human cruelty that created hell for our innocent mothers and their children had been predicated by either political drunkenness or some fanatical dogmatism or some myopic racism or a combination of all those silly abstractions.

    While the mothers, wives and children of the wicked ones who export suffering and inhumanity to other lands and other people are enjoying out-of-this-world pleasures, the candidates for hell fire are destroying the lives of others.

    Just imagine for a second the troubles women go through for just being women; they take care of the home, take care of husbands and in-laws, get pregnant, give birth and raise children and remain prayer warriors for their families for life. Imagine what most women go through to have children without mentioning the physicals of carrying the weight of some potbellied partners and inhaling some foul air of drunken husbands, the nine-month of weight carrying and the near-death point of child delivery. Some women go through serious medications just to conceive and after all that some crazy individuals in some crazy country would send bombs to annihilate the women, their husbands and their children

    The questions are worth repeating: do these heartless blood-thirsty leaders have mothers? Do they have wives? Do they have children? Should our dear God the Almighty look the other way while some crazy power drunk monsters destroy His creation?

    Children do not deserve the wicked treatment being routinely meted out to them by the so-called people in power. If the USA wants regime change, she could as well assassinate the leader of the country than destroy the entire country including the innocent citizens of such a country.

    Although a lot might have been destroyed before the wicked suffers the Karma and wrath of the Divine, it is a truism that the wicked shall not go unpunished. Where is the Roman Empire?

  • We’re traumatised, says family of missing secretary

    We’re traumatised, says family of missing secretary

    Six days after leaving home to do a transaction in the bank, the family of 32-year-old Miss Esther Chidinma Okechukwu, is traumatised.
    “We cannot eat and drink since the sad incident occurred. We have been having sleepless nights as well wondering what could have happen to my sister,” Esther’s eldest sibling, Ngozi Jessica Okechukwu, told The Nationyesterday.
    According to her, Esther, who works as a Secretary and Personal Assistant to the President of the African Farmers and Cultural Organisation (AFCO) in Lagos was seen last Wednesday telling the people at 433 Old Ojo Road, Satellite Town home that she was going to a bank for transaction.
    She said she was supposed to come to her office at ASPANDA inside Trade Fair Complex, but Esther did not show up.
    She said Esther has not returned since then.
    The fair-complexion lady, who hails from Ebonyi State in Afikpo North Local Government Area, was afterwards declared missing by her family.
    Ngozi wore a brown jacket on a blue skirt on that day.
    “When I returned from work on Wednesday around 6pm and my mum said Esther didn’t return home. We became worried later in the night when we didn’t see him because she doesn’t keep late nights or spend the night outside except if she is out of town, which is not so often. We have tried to call her number to no avail. At some point, I thought her phone was down. Later it repeatedly rang for sometime but no one picked the call but it has since been switched off. I also called her friends, but none of them knows her whereabouts. We have since lodged a formal complaint at Agboju Police Station but we haven’t heard anything from them yet,” said the distraught Ngozi, forcing back tears.
    “We are really worried about her safety and whereabouts because of the funny things that have been happening around. We just plead anybody with news on her whereabouts to notify us,” she pleaded.
    Pressed further, she said her family and friends have been combing the streets of Lagos and its environs in search of her missing sibling.
    “My mother is not herself anymore. Esther is an innocent person trying to make a living for herself. Whoever is holding her should please release her,” she said.
    Anybody with useful information about her whereabouts should contact the nearest police station or call: Ngozi Jessica Okechukwu on 08137066162.

  • Ejigbo assault victims: we were traumatised

    Finally, the victims of the Ejigbo market assault have been found, courtesy of the Women Arise Initiative Network, an organisation led by Dr. Joe Okey-Odumakin. While they await justice, the victims recount their ordeal and torture, which led to the death of a member of their family. SEUN AKIOYE reports

    Prior to February last year, the Agoma family was unknown to many Nigerians, except their neighbours at Ejigbo in Ejigbo Local Council Development Area (LCDA) in Lagos State.

    The father, Filman Agoma, an indigene of Topa in Badagry, was a palm wine tapper. Six days a week, he went into the marshland at 6am to tap his palm trees and returned at 8pm.

    His second wife, Ajoke, was a housewife. She brought her daughter, 12-year-old Nike Salami, into her new marriage with Agoma. In February last year, she was nursing another child, the youngest in the family. Filman also had some children from his first marriage; the eldest of them was Juliana (mother of four children) and her twin siblings. The family lived out their lives in mysery poverty in an uncompleted building. The Agoma family was poor, very poor.

    In December last year, an eight-minute video clips circulated on the Internet.It showed a group of men brutalising two naked women, who kept pleading to be spared. In the video, the women accepted they stole some quantities of pepper because they were hungry and pleaded for mercy. The men beat them, using all manners of instruments and poured red pepper into their genitals. The video ended with the women crying and wailing.

    On Tuesday, Joe Odumakin, a women’s rights activist, who has been leading the campaign for justice for what was then known as the “Ejigbo 2”, presented the victims (the women) and members of their family to reporters in Lagos. They travelled from Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, where they have been forced to relocate to appear before the Lagos State House of Assembly, which had taken over investigations in the case.

    To ascertain if they were the real victims, the video was played again, projected on a screen. It was like the opening of an old wound. Nike, the youngest victim, wriggled in agony on her seat, looked away quickly from the screen and covered her eyes with her hands. Her step-father bluntly refused to watch. He buried his head in his palms. The scene where his daughter was sodomized, beaten and abused was too much for him. Ajoke did not flinch and Kehinde had agony written all over his face.

    Nike looked exactly like she was in the video, except she has adopted a sad countenance, mostly looking forlorn and her mind seemed constantly out of the present. With the death of her sister Juliana – the prominent victim in the video- she was the only living witness, who can tell the world what actually happened. As she spoke, it was apparent her innocence had been violated and overnight, she had become an adult.

    “My sister woke me up and said we should go to the market where we took pepper of N50. But the next day, some people came to our home and started to scatter everything. They asked me to take them to where my sister was working. They took us back to the market and accused us of stealing baby clothes, which we denied. We told them we took the pepper and begged for mercy.”

    ‘They held a cutlass to our headS and threatened to kill us’

    Nike also said many members of the gang were known to the family and they were members of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), who were responsible for the security of the market. She identified the man in jeans as Tirin, the one in Ankara fabrics as Ajibola and the one who beat up Juliana as Abolore. But Tirin may have had other motives in partaking in this despicable act against the women. According to Nike, he had been pressurising her for a affair. Sometimes, he would lay-in-wait for her on the way to the market to propose his amorous feelings to her.

    “I always cursed him and the last time he did that he said one day I would fall into his hands,” Nike said. Providence seemed to have played into Tirin’s hand. The men went to fetch Juliana and bundled the two women back to a suspected OPC tarmac in the market popularly called Oju Ogun, which according to the family, had acquired the reputation of being a torture chamber.

    The men also returned to the house to fetch Ajoke. She said the gang was led by the Baba Oloja of the market. “Baba Oloja came to the house and I knelt down to greet him. Immediately, he slapped me and I began to urinate. He said I am the mother of thieves and that I should follow them. I told him to let me take my other children in school, but he insisted I should follow them to the market.”

    The men wasted no time, even seemed eager to undress the women. When they were naked, the interrogation, which lasted from around 11am till 7pm began. Tirin chose to torture Nike himself. According to her, he rubbed pepper all over her body, fondling her as he performed his horrifying duty. Nike yelled and screamed and in response to that theyallegedly threatened to kill her. Then she was asked to spread her legs and hot pepper was poured into her genitals. A stick was used to push the horrifying liquid down her womb.

    “So this is all that you are hiding all this time, is this not you, is this not your nakedness?” Tirin teased the agonising teenager. Ajoke was subjected to the same fate in the presence of her daughter and daughter-in-law. “They kept slapping me and saying they would kill us. They removed my clothes and underwear. They poured pepper into my eyes and then beat me mercilessly. Baba Oloja slapped me several times,” Ajoke said.

    Nike continued: “Somebody pushed my mother and they were stepping on her head as she was crying, they brought a cutlass and said they would cut my mummy’s head and if I talked too much they would kill me. Then, they held one of my legs and forcefully pushed them apart, then they poured the pepper into my private parts.” Ajoke spoke in a voice, which conveyed no emotions. It was evident she had suffered greatly and she no longer had any feelings left. Her voice was flat, almost merciless. As the torture went on, a member was recording the show on his mobile phone. Baba Oloja was said to have cleverly kept out of the offensive video, but invented some of the most devious tortures. The greatest punishment was reserved for Juliana, whom the men saw as leader of the ‘thieves’. For several hours she was beaten and interrogated. They prodded her to confess her crime. Juliana stuck to her story: she took N50 pepper because she needed to eat, she had not stolen in the market before and she begged for forgiveness. Instead, the men brutalised her and for a long time sodomised her. Then a special torture, designed to bring out the required information from her, was invented.

    “ One of them brought dry pepper and a bottle of Chelsea (dry gin), which he used to mix the pepper. Then they inserted the pepper into her private part, after they brought a stick and began to push it inside her,” Nike said.

    Juliana had a gripping tale of poverty and ill-fate. According to Kehinde, her brother, she r elocated to Lagos a few months before the incident because she had a problem with her husband and needed to make some money to feed her children. “I got a job for her in a restaurant; she was helping them to serve food and got N100 everyday, making N3, 000 a month,” Kehinde said.

    But Nike did not know her sister was dead until her encounter with reporters. After the family was released, Juliana could not walk or talk. “When my sister got home, she could not walk or talk. One of her eyes was very bad and she had cuts all over her. The next day, we took her to the hospital and then to the village, but her conditions did not improve and one month after that she died,” Kehinde said.

    This was unknown to Nike, who had been separated from her family since the incident. “ Your sister is dead,” someone told her. If a thunderbolt had fallen by her side, it could not have produced a greater reaction of shock when she received this news. “What do you want the government to do to those men?”

    Silence! “Your sister is dead, what do you want the government to do to them?” More silence. Nike bowed her head and for some time remained in that position. Then she covered her face.

    “The people that kill somebody, they usually kill them,” Nike said, it was not a question, it was a statement.

    But the mode of the torture and demand of the gang suggested there may be more sinister motives behind it all. Before the family could be released, N150,000 was allegedly demanded from them. Again that night, they reportedly chased the family out of the community. Ajoke said her infant child died before dawn. Kehinde, who works at a car wash close to the market, took over the narration.

    “ I was at work when they came to call me that they are beating my sister because she stole pepper. I didn’t believe until I went to the place, because she was earning N100 per day. I saw Baba Oja slapping my sister; they said they would kill her. Then he said we have to bring N150,000 or they would kill her. One man called Askari followed me –he is a panel beater- he negotiated the money down to N80, 000. I began to beg for money everywhere.

    “That day I was able to raise N20, 000, but they refused it. They said I have to pay N50,000 before they would release her. I signed an undertaking to pay the balance. Baba Oja usually come to my shop to disturb me to pay the balance.

    “One day, he threatened to arrest me. People begged him and I found a way to pay the remaining N30,000. My sister was not able to tell me what happened that night. Her eyes were bad and she couldn’t even move. We took her to the village, she died about a month later.”

    Nike’s step father was seeing her for the first time since the family was driven out of their home on the night of the incident. He was also arrested by the gang and taken to the chamber. When Juliana saw him, he pleaded that he should save her. “I could not do anything; they wanted to kill me too. I have never seen anything like this before. When I watched the video, I was shocked. I’m sad right now, I am depressed. Government should intervene. Those men should be punished because they oppressed me and destroyed my life. Yes, they have destroyed my life,” he said.

    A family in disarray

    The Agoma family has been in disarray since the night they were forcefully evicted from their home. Nike and her mother are now living in Kwara State and Nike has resumed school. Her father has no home. The twins have been living on their own, depending on their friends for assistance. Kehinde has to repay the money she borrowed to pay Baba Oja. His life has turned upside down. Since that night, Filma has been angry, always short on temper and his eyes has a permanent sadness in them.

  • Traumatised and bruised… children caught up in floods

    Traumatised and bruised… children caught up in floods

    The floods in various parts of the country have left children with the Hobson’s choice of living under conditions that are below human standard. They are traumatised, suffering and scarred, report UJA EMMANUEL, NICHOLAS KALU, BASHIR MOHAMMED and KOLADE ADEYEMI

    Little Hope, Patience, Ngozi and Amara had no hand in the fate that has befallen them. Chased away from the comfort of their parents’ home by the Makurdi, Benue State flood, they are now four of the over 200 children whose homes are the three displaced people’s camps. They sleep in classrooms, defecate in make-shift toilets and live at the mercy of the government and donors.

    Their residency of the camps means they are not at liberty to eat what they want. They have been unable to go back to their schools, which resumed a few days after the rains overran their homes. Sound sleep has become a luxury, with mosquitoes feeding fat on them in the open camps. Clothes and toiletries are in short supply.

    In short, they are traumatised, scarred and unsure of what tomorrow will bring. They are reduced to living every day as it comes.

    Most of the children in the camps are between the ages of one to 14. But there is also baby Suswam. He was born at the Wurukum camp. His mother Chiso was delivered of him last week and she named him after the Benue State Governor.

    At the time of his birth, the camp was lacking beverages and baby foods. The other camps at St. Catherine and NKST Primary Schools also faced similar challenge.

    The Camp commandant in charge of L.G.E.A Primary School Wurukum, Mr. Terumbur Alabar, admitted that the development was a major challenges.

    The Camp commandant at St. Catherine, Mrs. Diana Akera, confirmed that they lacked beverages and the assistant camp commandant at N.K.S.T Wadata, Miss Doose Agede, said the situation was the same in her camp.

    Hope, Patience, Ngozi and Amara told The Nation that they had missed school. They said life in camp is difficult.

    Hope said: “We barely have enough to feed. We now sleep in the classroom, with mosquitoes all over. We can’t play much.”

    Abdul Umaru, a 12-year-old, told The Nation that the disaster had truncated his Quranic education. He described life in the camp as difficult.

    A nursing mother, Mrs. Ngunengen Ape, lamented the inability of her three children to go to school. Little Miss Wandoo Ugo , five , said she missed school and play. She said she wanted to get back home.

    “I hardly find enough sleep. I am missing school. The Federal Government should do something to alleviate our suffering. Life in camp is terrible,” she said.

    The camps in Lokoja, Kogi State, are overstretched. The population of children in the Adankolo, Gadumo and Kabbawa camps is put at over 600.

    Children expressed sadness at their inability to go to schools.

    Seven-year-old Sule Rebecca said her parents lost everything, including her schooling materials, to the floods.

    She said: “My parents could no longer afford by books and uniform that got lost in the flood. The little money my mother made in her grinding engine business was washed away by the flood. Even if I still have my uniform and other school materials, my parents have no money to pay for my school fees because water has taken away their properties, including our grinding engine.”

    The Science Secondary School student urged the government to get teachers to teach them at their camps.

    Madam Jummai Abdulkadir, a mother of four, said feeding the children had been a major challenge. She condemned a situation where a family of five shares one or two cups of rice for a meal.

    “Though we know it is the situation that led us to this travail, and government is doing its best to provide for us, but the supply is too small for us. Even the toilet provided is being locked up most times because they accused us of misusing it,” she said.

    A widow, Mrs. Ramatu Aminu, told The Nation that a N35 loaf of bread is given to a family for breakfast. She said of her seven children, only five were registered by the camp’s managers. She said all the children have stopped schooling because of the disaster.

    At the Adankolo camp, Rabi Yaro and her four children sleep on a tiny mattress she salvaged from the wreckage of her former house.

    She said: “I have been homeless for more than two weeks; this is where we are staying now. I took nothing except for this mattress and those three cooking pots.”

    At the camps, lunch is usually bread, with nothing to go with it. In a day, a family gets two cups of gari, pure water and bread.

    In Agwagwune, Biase, Cross River State, children live under inhuman conditions with no potable water, food and medication. Their parents do not fare better. No thanks to flood, villages in the area can only be accessed by canoes meandering through the forest trees amidst reptiles and dangerous insects.

    A resident of Egbism village, Mr. Ekuma Bassey, lamented that the flood was the first of its kind in over 10 years.

    He lamented that he and his children had no place to move to as they could not afford to rent a home upland. So, they have been ‘living’ on water.

    He said: “Now, we only eat bread, which we have to go to a neighbouring community to get. We cannot use firewood here. We cannot use kerosene. We are suffering. Please help us.”

    Children are facing hard times in Okpandin, a village in Yala Local Government Area, which was sacked by flood.

    A resident of the area, Cyprian Idim, said: “We have no access to that village again and the people in that village had to be evacuated to other villages. There is no access to that village again. Water has surrounded the village.”

    Mrs. Glory Inyang of Umon Island in Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State said her children have had to stop schooling.

    She said: “Our children can no longer go to school. We even thank God they are alive.”

    For Mr. Bassey Ilem’s children in Agwagwune, Biase, the mode of transportation to school has changed.

    He said: “They now have to go to school in a canoe. If the children here tweaked the popular nursery rhyme a bit to sing, ‘Row, row, row your boat gently down the street/Merrily, merrily, merrily life is not a treat’ it would definitely not be out of place. Things are no longer as they used to be and life has grown a lot harder for these people who have been forced to get used to the body of water around them.”

    A resident of the area, Mr. Willam Ilem, said: “Primary school has a separate canoe from secondary school. That is the means of transportation.”

    In Abayong, a student of the Government Secondary School, David Ana, said: “I can no longer go to school. My school uniforms, school bags, books and sandals were all washed away in the flood.”

    In Agwagwune, pupils of St. Augustine Primary School have a makeshift school – the Town Hall. “We are now using town hall as classrooms. The children can study here as the schools have been taken over by water,” a teacher, who pleaded anonymity, said.

    Cross River State Commissioner of Education Prof Offiong Offiong said: “We have already taken steps to relocate the children and make necessary arrangements to ensure that academic activities in hose schools are not disrupted. Some of the schools have also been captured under our comprehensive renovation programme and by next month some contractors are going to be mobilised to sight. So, we are on top of the situation.”

    The Director-General of the State Emergency Management Authority (SEMA), Mr. Vincent Aquah, said children and their parents are suffering.

    He said: “These conditions are far below human standard. Children and women are suffering and there is an urgent need to address the situation before it gets out of hand.”

    He appealed to the Federal Government and international organisations to come to the aid of the state government, which, he said, has no financial capacity to effectively manage the situation.

    Hajiya Amina Yusuf, a mother of eight who was among the over 15,000 people displaced by the flood which ravaged five villages in Warawa Local Government Area of Kano State, has cried out for help over hunger and lack of adequate shelter for the victims.

    According to Hajia Yusuf, for two days, her children and other residents of the camps were neglected. She said there was no food and medication.

    She said: “It was only this afternoon that they brought us gari and sugar. I have about eight children with me, what can we do with three cups of gari? This is pathetic and I call on those in authority to do something urgently to alleviate our plight.

    “We did not cause the flood. We are victims of natural disaster and that does not mean that we should not be treated as human beings. In everything, we give Allah the glory that all of us survived the flood.”