CRUEL FATE OF NIGERIAN CHILD

By KATE HALIM and VERA WISDOM BASSEY

ONE look at his picture leaves even the most hard-hearted person in tears. The sharpness of his eyes is in contrast with the battered condition of his frail body. While gaping at the visibility of his rib cage and his wrinkled skin even at age nine, one is tempted to think that he is one of those children from war- torn coun­tries. But that is not the case.

Nine-year-old Korede Taiwo’s tired body tells a tale of torture, wickedness and inhumane treat­ment from the man who is sup­posed to protect him, his father. For several weeks, he was chained like a dog in the church premises for allegedly being possessed by the spirit of stealing.

But luck smiled on Korede when he was rescued by men of the Ni­gerian Security and Civil Defence Corps alongside officers from the Ogun State Police Command at­tached to the Onipanu Division, Ota, Ogun State. Looking malnour­ished and tired, he was lucky to have survived his ordeal.

His father, Francis Taiwo, pastor of the Key of Joy Celestial Church, was arrested on July 24 after ini­tially evading law enforcement offi­cials days after his son was rescued. Mr. Taiwo reportedly said he took the action, because he believed his son was possessed with a ‘stealing spirit’ known in Yoruba language as ’emi ole’. He admitted to chaining him because he felt he was pos­sessed and not comfortable with his stealing habit.

But Korede is not one to be in­timidated. He told reporters that he would not want to live with his father and step-mother again. He revealed that he was not fed regu­larly when he was chained. His fa­ther and step mother only fed him twice a day. And some days, he was not given food. Korede wants to go back to school because he wants to achieve his life dream of becoming a doctor.

And life seems to have only good things in store for this mal­treated child, as he was adopted by the Ogun State Government. Ogun State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technol­ogy, Modupe Mujota, revealed that when the wife of the governor, Mrs Olufunso Amosun, and other members of the State Executive Council paid a visit to the boy, they revealed that the educational needs of the boy among other things would be taken care of.

The Commissioner for Justice, Olumide Ayeni, also said that the government had opened a legal case to bring to justice, all the peo­ple involved in the Korede Taiwo child abuse saga so as to serve as a deterrent to others.

Even though the boy’s case seems to have a happy ending, it may not be the same for many other Nigerian children scattered across different states of the federation. At different times, cases of children being abused either as child labour­ers or victims of human trafficking have come to light. Many of these children find themselves in situa­tions where they are used, battered and abused without hope for a bet­ter tomorrow.

For those children who live on the streets, the only language they understand is survival. And they do that by earning a living on the streets, speaking street language, dealing with others as they see their mates on the street do. Many of them end up joining street gangs, the wrong crowd, and do wrong things just to survive.

All over the world, children in conflict-affected countries have been detained without charge for months or even years as national security threats. Untold numbers have been tortured or have died in custody. The girls are gang-raped, impregnated and killed too. During wars, children are the greatest vic­tims as they suffer hunger, maltreat­ment, torture and even death.

Victims’ stories

Thirteen-year old Esther Nke­mdirim lives with her madam and family in Festac Town, Lagos. She wakes up very early every morning to attend to house chores, no matter how tired she feels. Esther works as a domestic help to the family she resides with, yet there is no respite for her. She cleans, cooks, washes, irons and even fetches water from a nearby tap.

But she would know the true meaning of pain one morning when she woke up late. She had overslept because she went to bed late the previous night. Thus, she did not wake up early enough to prepare her employer’s children for school. That singular action drew the ire of her madam who did not hold back in meting out a harsh punishment to the little girl.

To teach Esther a lesson, her boss baptized her with hot water while she was still sleeping. She was awo­ken with the piercing pain of hot water on her skin. Screaming and fanning herself with her tiny hands, Esther ran out of the house alert­ing their neighbours in the process. After inflicting serious injury on her, her boss abandoned her to her fate, not minding the number of years she had served her family. Soon the sore began to fester, leaving Esther in ex­cruciating pains everyday. Her plight came to the open when flies began perching on her back. This aroused the curiosity of her class teacher who questioned her about her predica­ment. When her classmates made attempts to touch her back, she screamed and thereafter spilled the beans.

She revealed that her boss was in the habit of brutalizing her and leaving her with wounds almost on daily basis. She added that the woman had an instrument of torture, which left indelible marks on her. Life has not been fair to Esther. She lost her parents at a tender age and was entrusted into the hands of her boss who brought her to Lagos from her village as a maid.

Nine year -old Nkoli Omeruah is another child labourer. All she does is work, clean and dust the house of the family who brought her to Lagos from Anambra State. But she suffers daily brutality from her boss. Every little mistake earns her thorough beating.

According to a neighbour who does not want to be named, the woman beats the child every day for no reason. One day, she beat her so much while backing her one year -old daughter, that the little girl’s face became swollen and she could not open her eyes.

When her neighbours saw the sor­ry state the girl was in, they alerted the police who came and arrested the woman for assault. And because of the severity of her actions, some people in her neighbourhood almost beat her up.

Ten year- old Chinecherem Obi is another victim of a brutal guard­ian. One day, her guardian beat her so much for stealing food when she could no longer endure her hunger pangs. She ended up with serious bruises on her stomach and back. Her hands and ankles were swol­len, she also had a big lump on her forehead and could not turn her neck sideways because of pains. It was so hard to believe that the woman she lived with had inflicted those injuries on her. Her crime was eating in a neigh­bour’s house by 1pm one Sunday afternoon. The poor girl who could only speak Igbo language said she was very hungry and her madam told her to finish washing up her son’s clothes and tidy up the house before eating. In the course of washing the clothes, she felt dizzy and told a neighbour who took her into her house and gave her some food.

Obviously, madam must have strolled out and noticed the girl’s absence from her duty post which resulted in the beating. Her father is late and her mother who is a widow is struggling to take care of her three other children in the vil­lage. Despite living with the guard­ian for over one year in Lagos, Chinecherem is yet to be enrolled in any school.

Another dimension to the plight of the Nigerian child

Recently, Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development Monitoring Team arrested four women who were begging for alms with babies less than a month old that were not theirs.

Hadiza Nosiru and Salamotu Salisu, both from Jigawa State were arrested at the Oyingbo area of the state. Investigations revealed that the two women apprehended are not the biological mothers of the babies, but were given to them by their parents who later got paid for each baby.

Forty-year-old Aregbesola is one of the women arrested for using her children to beg for alms in re­turn for stipends. According to her, the person who hires her child al­ways pays her between N1,000 and N1,500 daily.

The woman claimed she had four other children. According to her, the first two children attend school somewhere in Ikotun area. She said: “I stay at Ijora Olopa though I am from Ibadan in Oyo State. I work with a food vendor, who pays me N300 daily. My el­dest child is 11 years old. ”

Aregbesola, who was the only Yoruba woman among the sus­pects, interpreted for others, who spoke in Hausa and couldn’t ex­plain why they ventured into the illegal business. She claimed that she and other women only released their babies around 5pm. and get them back with money by 7pm. daily. Two of the women, Hadiza Nosiru and Salamotu Salisu, hail from Jigawa State.

The infants were taken to the Rehabilitation and Training Centre at Majidun, Ikorodu for shelter, as the government vowed to immedi­ately commence investigation and possibly prosecute the women.

Non-governmental organisations react

In a swift reaction to the news of the recent rescue of chained Kore­de, three Non-Governmental Or­ganisations (NGOs) are calling on government to urgently respond to the increasing rate of stigmatising and branding vulnerable children as witches.

United Kingdom-based char­ity, Africans Unite Against Child Abuse (AFRUCA) and Nigeria’s Centre for Children’s Health Edu­cation, Orientation and Protection (CEE-HOPE) alongside the Hu­manist Association for Peace and Social Tolerance Advancement (HAPSTA) said it was time the Nigerian government showed that it meant business in putting an end to the prevalence and worrying trend of children being branded witches, ostracized, tortured and even killed in several parts of the country.

‘’We are appalled by the indif­ference the Nigerian government is showing towards the welfare of children, especially the lack of political will to see through cases involving gross abuse of children and non-implementation of the Child Rights Act. This re­cent incident is a wake-up call for the government to take up her statutory responsibility and duty to protect citizens especially vulner­able groups such as children, from harm.’’

Debbie Ariyo, founder and Chief Executive Officer, AFRUCA said, “The terrible cases of children ac­cused of witchcraft coming out of Nigeria are quite alarming. What is really shocking is the seeming lackadaisical attitude of the gov­ernment in addressing these cases and the general disregard for chil­dren’s rights and welfare in Nige­ria. It appears there are no systems and structures in place to ensure children are protected from harm and abuse. There is little in place to mitigate or prevent children’s suf­ferings. Where gross abuses such as this occur, there is no action on the part of government. When it comes to support and care of abused children, a lot of this work is left to NGOs to deal with and most of them do not have the re­sources to do so.

“Government cannot delegate the protection of its children to NGOs, it has the primary respon­sibility to ensure all children are protected as part of its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the child.”

Dr. Adeyemi Ademowo, Proj­ects Director of HAPSTA on his part noted that witchcraft branding of children had reached an alarm­ing proportion:

“It is quite unfortunate but Ko­rede Taiwo’s case is just one of the approximately 6,000 child abuse cases that take place every day in Nigeria approximately, seven reported cases with the Nigerian Police in every of the 774 local governments. ‘Unfortunately, these children do not get justice, because of our nauseatingly corrupt system. Contemporary dysfunctional fami­ly system, blind religiosity, poverty, belief in money rituals, frustration of unemployment and systemic exploitation have made more chil­dren to be vulnerable”, he added.

Ademowo urged government agencies to keep a tab on the ac­tivities of some pentecostal pastors, herbalists and shepherds of white garment churches so as to ensure that the rights of the Nigerian child were not violated in the course of ‘exorcisms, amulets-making, de­liverances and religious- induced torture for pecuniary financial re­wards.

“Based on experience, the judi­ciary must be strengthened, being the last hope of the common man, in dealing with cases like this with­out fears or favours for the sake of deterrence,” he further advised.

In the words of Betty Abah, CEE-HOPE’s Executive Director, Korede’s case and other related incidences paint the nation’s image badly, yet there is hardly any sense of shame by those vested with the responsibility of protecting its citi­zens.

“We ought to be ashamed, actu­ally, that the rest of the world goes to sleep virtually every day with horrific reports of abuses of inno­cent children and other vulnerable people emanating from here and nothing concrete is done to serve as a deterrence or to stem the tide,” she noted, adding: “Only a few months ago, a Denmark woman, AnjaRinggren Loven rescued a boy who had been abandoned and was starving to death in a village in Akwa Ibom State after being tagged a ‘witch’. The world was outraged at such atrocity, but as we speak, no one has heard a single word of response from any govern­ment agency and at any level.”

These three organizations further called on all stakeholders to prevail on the government to enforce the Child Rights Acts of 2003 and the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child to safeguard children nationwide and punish offenders including parents who brand their own children witches and endanger their lives in the pro­cess as is the recent case in Ogun.

Psychologists speak

Speaking on the state of mind of the nine-year-old Korede, chained and denied foods for weeks by his father, Head of Department of Psychology, Lagos State Univer­sity (LASU), Ojo, Dr. Kayode O. Taiwo, said such a child may be suspicious of even close relatives, and worst of all, strangers.

He added that children subjected to terrible treatments are prone to rebel. They react to the authority figure meting out punishment to them. Also, after taking in so much punishment and inhumane treat­ment from those close to them, these children may become suspi­cious of other close relatives even when they have good intentions for them as well as strangers too.

‘’Little children should not be chained or punished with hunger just to correct them. The perception of such a child, that is, his thinking and his disposition to people will not be that positive anymore for a long time, except that it takes real intervention in terms of showing them consideration, love and com­passion.’’

Clinical psychologist, Mrs. Pa­tricia Chiegboka said that the dese­cration of the innocence of children and violation of their dignity which had constituted a dent on the soul of humanity must stop.

She added that there was no way one could explain the effects of negative actions on children. Oftentimes, it resulted in the de­velopment of hard skin on the part of the abused, who then imbibed the abuse as part of himself. The abused would also accommodate and live with it. In the end, it does not change the child nor bring about appropriate behaviour.

According to her, religious or psychological abuses being carried out by religious bodies today have no impact on children. Labelling stubborn and opinionated children witches and wizards, blaming them for family misfortunes and tortur­ing them in the name of casting out evil spirits do more harm than good, says she.

“There is something in child­hood psycho-pathology. It is ab­normal behaviour in children. Many children pick up these nega­tive behaviours through training, socialization and through their environment. Sometimes, it is an inherent trait in children which will affect the child behaviourally. They can be stubborn, play pranks, and restless. These children need therapy and not further punishment from religious heads in the name of exorcising demons.’’

Chiegboka noted that towing the religious part was a wrong way to treat these children. They may die as a result of the harsh treatment being meted out to them. They may never recover. Evaluating them for mental health conditions is key to managing them well. People who are using religious canopy to treat these children are not doing well. It is due to ignorance as many parents don’t know some of these children have mental conditions that require mental treatment, the expert notes.

She said that religious beliefs had taken part of the operational system in Nigeria. A lot of deceit and manoeuvrings are taking place in religious settings so that these religious leaders will get more fol­lowers. Many of them are using the ignorance of many Nigerians to enrich themselves. And branding children witches or possessed is one of the ways they control their gullible followers.

Chiegboka revealed that chil­dren who are physically, emotion­ally and psychologically abused do not turn out better at the end of the day. They in turn abuse oth­ers, because they tend to see how they were treated as the way of life. Children that grow in abusive envi­ronment have 75 per cent chance of developing mental illness. Neglect­ed and abandoned children also fall into this category.

‘’Nigerians need to be vigilant and report cases of abuse on chil­dren around them. They need to re­port guardians sending out children to hawk till late, overwork and even inflict physical punishment on chil­dren for no reason. We should be our brother’s keeper to stop child abuse in Nigeria, Chiegboka said.’’