Below is a detailed story of how Bayelsa parent locks up their 16 y.o daughter in a cage for three years due to her convulsive state ....
A regular visitor to the home of Mr Selekeowei
Olokumo, in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria’s
South-South region, would probably have noticed a
small make shift building directly opposite his one
bedroom apartment which could easily be mistaken
for a generator cage.
To think it is a place where he stores his old and
worn out property would not be out of place, as it
was haphazardly built with wood and carton on what
could be seen as a semi refuse dump site.
It was a feeling of shock when Channels Television
realised that it was not for keeping his generator or
other items but where his 16-year old daughter,
Blessing Olokumo, had called home for almost three
years.
Blessing is the 6th out of the 16 children of Mr and
Mrs Olokumo; a twin who has no relationship with her
twin sister, not because her twin sister was dead. she
is simply ashamed of being associated with her.
She is not leprous, neither is she affected by any
contagious disease. She is just a child who had
convulsion when she was three years old and was not
properly monitored by the medical doctors, so instead
of outgrowing it as most children of her age would
probably have done, she has since been battling with
the condition.
One would expect her parents to be sympathetic to her
plight and treat her with more care and attention, but
the reverse has been the case, as Blessing is being
treated with utmost disdain by those who are
supposed to love her more.
She has been tagged the evil child, accused of being
responsible for the death of her immediate siblings
who were also twin girls. She has been abandoned by
her parents in a cage for almost three years and left to
God to decide her fate.
Luck smiled on Blessing when members of the Mary
Slessor Twin Foundation, a foundation focused on the
welfare of people of multiple birth heard of her plight
and decided to intervene. She was rescued on January
25, 2014 in a very bad condition and has since been
on admission at the Niger Delta Teaching Hospital,
Okolobiri.
Blessing’s father, a security guard at the Niger Delta
Teaching Hospital, Okolobiri was asked how he could
do such to his flesh and blood. He simply stated
without remorse that he was tired of looking after the
girl.
“Why I kept her in this house is that when she
defecates and urinates, she soils the whole house
when the mother and myself are not around. So there’s
nothing I can do again. I now isolated her from the
apartment I’m living”, he said.
While one may be tempted to call her dad wicked,
heartless and much more, one wonders what words
would be adequate to describe her mother, Mrs Bernice
Olokumo, a petty trader, who accused her daughter of
being responsible for the death of her younger siblings
who were also twin girls.
On her relationship with her daughter, she simply said
she was afraid of her and appeals to the Government
and other people of goodwill to come take Blessing
from them, as they were tired of fending for their own
child.
To ascertain the present condition of Blessing,
Channels Television paid her a visit at the hospital and
met a transformed girl. Gone were the tiny frame, bony
knee and sunken eyes. A cheerful, robust and well fed
child was what she had become, after just three
months of love and care.
On the way forward regarding her medical bills and her
future, efforts to speak with the doctors proved futile,
but the President of the Mary Slessor Twin Foundation,
Mr Ebitei Roberts, spoke.
“What we are working on is that after now when she is
discharged, we want to take her to maybe a motherless
babies’ home or any special school to rehabilitate her.
With the way we are seeing things, if we take her back
to the family, they will take her back to where she was
and we don’t want that to repeat itself because we
have spent money.”
The foundation has since lodged a formal complaint
with the Police and the welfare department of the State
Ministry of Women Affairs. The complaints list criminal
charges of child abduction, inhuman treatment, child
molestation and failure to enrol a child for proper
education...
Extracted from Channels tv
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