By Ifedayo Adebayo
After almost nine months of separation with her child, Nike Ogunbiyi, one of hundreds of youngsters in search of petty jobs at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, finally reconciled with the baby she was lured to give away for N10, 000 and an handset in July 2009.
Born in 1993, Ms. Ogunbiyi was impregnated at the age of 15 by her lover who refused to accept the pregnancy. Six months into the pregnancy, she met a lady, Busayo Adegoju who promised to help.
This offer of help would trigger a long period of agony and controversy for the girl, her family and her supposed benefactors.
On July 24, 2009, three days after her delivery, Ms Ogunbiyi was tricked into giving the baby away.
According to her, a woman who described herself as a ‘commissioner’s wife’ accompanied Mrs. Adegoju, the wife of a lecturer at the university, to take the baby away from her with a promise to take the baby to London for a proper care.
“They said how they would take care of her and take her to London,” she said. “Few days after the baby was taken away, Mrs. Adegoju gave me something to put in my mouth to go and speak to her friend, one Shade Sanda, nee Okediji for the money made from the sale of my baby. Though she didn’t give me any money, Busayo called me one day and took me to the market to buy a handset and some clothes which she later said was the proceed from the sale,” Ms. Ogunbiyi said.
According to her, Mrs. Adegoju also said she borrowed N10, 000 from Mrs. Sanda for her maternity bills – a sum which she said she had to repay from the proceeds.
Call for justice
When Ms. Ogunbiyi’s aunt, Tolu Alao who also lives in Ile-Ife, discovered that her niece had been in the town and learnt of the ordeal she went through, she approached a group, Women Against Rape, Sexual Harassment and Sexual Exploitation and a lawyer, Gboyega Amusan of Kosalabaro Chambers, to help secure the return of the then nine months old child.
A report to the Nigeria Police Force, Ife Area Command, on March 9, 2010 led to the arrest of Mrs. Okediji and Mrs Adegoju, who both allegedly refused to disclose the identity of the third woman who had referred to herself as wife of one commissioner in the state.
Mrs Alao, however, said on the day of the arrest, an Ile-Ife indigene who is also a serving commissioner in the state cabinet called her and advised her to withdraw the case as the girl involved is still young and can still give birth to more children.
She would later yield to the subtle threats and plea – especially when the missing child was allegedly found, abandoned, in the compound of the accused persons on the night of March 20, 2010.
That was two months after the search for the missing child started.
On March 22, 2010, Mrs Alao, through her lawyer, withdrew her suit (Charge no. MIF/60C/2010) filed at the Ile-Ife Magistrate Court against the accused persons. The court had earlier ordered the police to unveil those behind the crime.
“My decision to withdraw the court case was borne out of serial threat through phone calls and text messages, threatening my life and that of my children, while sometimes those making the calls, specifically mentioned that they will attack my only son,” she said.
Unlucky mother
Ms. Ogunbiyi had walked out of her aunt’s home in Ondo on April 25, 2008, with just N200 and headed for Ile-Ife on a mission to survive by herself, triggering an almost two -year search for her by family members.
Ms. Ogunbiyi, in an interview conducted on March 11, 2010, narrated how she began her journey to the campus, got herself a job at a restaurant and finally got pregnant.
“I delivered my baby at Olomowewe hospital, Enuwa, Ile-Ife on July 21, 2009,” she said. “Mrs Busayo Adegoju and Mr. Kehinde (shittu) took me there. Both of them did not know me before, but they helped to accommodate me. When I left home in Ondo, after they caught me with a handset that has bad things that was not supposed to be found with a good child on it (she declined to give the details of the bad things found on the handset, but claimed she borrowed the handset from a male neighbour).
“So, I angrily left home on the third day and came to Ife, from there I started roaming about.”
Before she left Ondo, she was a student of Bethany High School, where her aunt is the proprietress.
“I left Ondo on September 18, 2008. Though I have people in Ife, but I didn’t let them see me.
“I was dodging them and later started working on the campus at Honey B food canteen. I was dodging my aunty because I met someone called Murphy at that time that impregnated me. So, it was because of the pregnancy that I was dodging her.”
Her boyfriend’s rejection of the pregnancy threw her into despair.
Reluctant father
When NEXT met Murphy on April 1, 2010, the 30-year-old tailor said his real name was Mufutau Adeyemi. Speaking in Yoruba, he described his fallout with Ms. Ogunbiyi as unfortunate.
“I met this lady at where she worked. She told me her problems and I pitied and helped her, by allowing her to live with me. I was the one that disvirgined her and that made my love for her to grow so wild, but she lies too much and that is my problem with her.
“When I met her, she told me she is an orphan and that she was 19-years-old. I also enquired to know her people, a request she always turned down.
“Months after she had been with me, she once called someone whom she described as her aunty who lives at Ilesa. I spoke with her on the phone and requested that I will like to meet with her. Meanwhile, Nike all the while sleeps around with other boys and this was the problem that led to our parting ways. I didn’t hear from her until a day that I just tried her number and she started telling me that she is pregnant for me. I was dazed but thought it was still one of her lies, until police officers came to arrest me here one day, asking me to produce the baby.
“I do not understand, because it also sounds to me like, ‘does she truly have a baby.’ I was beaten and they later released me on bail to my sister,” Mr Adeyemi.
Mr. Adeyemi said the paternity of the baby should be determined and he would like to have the baby if the result confirms him as the father.
“Since that day I was beaten, I have not seen anyone of them. You can now understand my plight. I don’t know what to do, and people just come to me that they saw my name in the newspaper.
“It is unfair. The newspaper people did not even bother to talk to me. It is not good,” he said.
A week after the interview with Mr. Adeyemi, Ms. Ogunbiyi’s family said that they had received a surprising correspondence from his family, claiming the fatherhood of the child.
“I am not giving him any child, because I did not even give him the mother as wife,” Mrs Alao said. “If he wants the child, then he should be reminded of the statement he wrote at the police station, when the heat was high.”
Closed case
The Area Commander, Ife Area Command, of the Nigeria Police, Abdulrazak Ibrahim, said since the case has been charged to court, the police has suspended further activities pending determination of the case.
Further enquiries showed that the police has stopped working on the case. An assistant Superintendent of Police, who is the administrative officer to Mr. Ibrahim, said last week there was nothing left on the case.
“I think they have found the baby or what do you still want?” she said.
After series of unsuccessful visits to the homes of Mrs Adegoju and Sanda’s at Ile-Ife, for their response to the accusations, NEXT only sighted someone peeping through the window on April 13, 2010, claiming that those bearing the names have all packed away from the house.
Another of the accused persons, Maureen Famuyide, a hair stylist and deaconess at Winners Chapel, Ile-Ife, who is also Mrs. Sanda’s friend, declined to speak when contacted on the phone.
“I think they have found the baby? So what do you still want,” she said. She refused to answer questions on her alleged refusal to grant Ms. Ogunbiyi an opportunity to locate her Aunt, who happens to attend the same church with her.
“I am so sorry I don’t know anything about this. I don’t discuss any of all these things. I am not discussing any of all these things, that is my comment,” she said.
