Residents of Langbasa, a community
in Ajah area of Lagos, are accusing a
woman in the neighbourhood of
causing a grievous harm on her two-
year-old stepdaughter. Kehinde, as
she’s known, is in trouble for allegedly
dipping the two hands of her little
stepdaughter, Esther, into oven-hot
water.
The girl’s hands were boiled terribly,
and many are raising concern that
one of them might have become
utterly useless. Esther, it was
gathered, has lost her own mum
about a year ago a few days after her
first birthday. The poor little girl has
since been living with her father,
known among residents of the area
as Baba Eleja. Baba Eleja, Esther’s dad,
later brought in Kehinde, a mother of
three, as his wife. He put Esther in the
care of his new wife, Kehinde.
Trouble started for the woman on
Wednesday, October 31. She wasn’t
feeling good and invited a nurse to
prescribe drugs for her. It was the
nurse that noticed Esther’s boiled
hands. The nurse also realised that
the little girl was very unhealthy. She
sought to know what was responsible
for the little girl’s condition and
Kehinde allegedly explained that the
girl mistakenly put her hands inside a
bucket of hot water in the room.
Obviously not satisfied with that
explanation, the nurse went to inform
Kehinde’s neighbours about the
strange development.
Many of the neighbours, who had all
along suspected that all was not well
with little Esther as Kehinde was
always beating her, rushed to the
room to see the girl. One of the
neighbours, who described himself as
her father’s kinsman, spoke to the
reporter. His words: “When we saw
Esther, lying on the floor with her
boiled hands, we were moved to
tears. We feared that the poor girl
might die any moment from then.
We quickly made efforts to rush her to
the hospital for treatment. I don’t
think Esther was the one that dipped
her own hands in the hot water. In
fact, if you see that damage done on
those hands, you would know that
somebody must have dipped those
hands in some boiling water. The
hands were boiled to the wrist. Even
that poor girl wouldn’t be able to use
one of the hands again.” Another
resident of the area, a woman, said
Kehinde never spared the cane on the
little girl.
“She is always beating the girl with
canes. You can even see scars of the
wounds that her canes inflicted on the
girl’s body. Since we noticed what
happened to Esther, we have moved
her away from the woman. Earlier
today, when the girl saw her
stepmother, she was so terrified that
she cried and ran away. That shows
she (Kehinde) has been wicked to
her. I advise the relatives of the girl’s
mother to take her away from her
father so that something more terrible
than this doesn’t happen to her,” she
told the reporter.
When Daily Sun sought to speak with
Kehinde in her husband’s one room
apartment in Olugbe compound in
the community, her husband as well
as some of her relatives wanted to
prevent the encounter, saying they
didn’t want the family’s dirty linen
washed in public. Explanations by the
reporter that since the matter had
gone to the police, it had already
gone beyond their private domain,
did little to persuade the angry
relatives. In fact, at a point, Baba Eleja
got angry and rushed to the nearby
Langbasa police post where he
reported the “intruding” journalist.
Meanwhile, other relatives as well as
the landlord of the apartment granted
audience to the reporter and urged
Kehinde to grant an interview. In the
course of the interview, Baba Eleja
suddenly materialised with a
policeman in tow, apparently to get
the ‘busybody’ arrested. But as soon
as the police officer discovered the
reporter’s identity, he asked the
journalist to continue his job. He
advised the enraged husband to
cooperate with him. Amidst verbal
invectives being hurled at her by
neighbours and some relatives, who
believed she did dip Esther’s hands
into a pot of steaming water, Kehinde
told the reporter her story: “It
happened a few weeks ago.
That morning, I noticed that Esther
was looking very dull. So, I asked her
to come to me and I gave her a potty
for her to urinate into. I discovered
that the urine was black, which
showed that she was sick. So, I didn’t
allow her to go to school. That day, I
was also bleeding because I just had a
miscarriage. After a while, I kept a
bowl of very hot water that I wanted
to use on myself beside our bed and
rushed out to the kitchen. Suddenly, I
heard Esther’s piercing cry and I
rushed back into the room only to see
her struggling with the bowl of hot
water.
By the time I could rescue her, she
already boiled her two hands. I
thought she wanted to drink water
because she was eating the rice that I
cooked for her and my own children
before I left the room. I quickly went
to borrow N100 from a neighbour
with which I bought some balm that I
applied on the hands. I also gave her
some drugs for her fever and she
soon slept off. “When her father
returned from work in the night and
noticed what happened to her, he
beat the hell out of me, in spite of my
condition. It took the intervention of
our landlord before he left me.
Since then, Esther has been staying
with me at home. She has not been
going to school and I’ve been doing
my best to treat her. “But a few days
ago, I invited a nurse, who is also a
neighbour to attend to me. As a result
of the miscarriage, I have been feeling
very weak and I have lost a lot of
blood. The nurse came and I was lying
on the bed. Esther was resting on a
mattress close to the bed.
The nurse came to attend to me but
when she saw Esther, she looked
worried and asked what happened to
her. When I explained, she asked why
we didn’t take her to hospital yet and I
said I didn’t have the money and that
I was expecting that Esther’s father
would do that. “The nurse promptly
attended to me and hurriedly left after
examining Esther’s boiled hands for
two or three times. It wasn’t long after
she left that a crowd of neighbours
broke into our room to see Esther.
They soon pounced on me and
started beating me. It took the
intervention of policemen, who were
invited by some of them, to rescue me
from the mob. I would have been
lynched. They thought that I
deliberately dipped her hands into
boiling water. I didn’t do that at all. I
have always been taking care of Esther
as if I were her mother. Even people
call me Mama Esther because of the
way I treat her. I couldn’t have done
such a terrible thing to her.”
SUNNEWS
No comments:
Post a Comment