Channels TV
tells a story of how parents in Bayelsa state kept their 16 year old
daughter in a cage for three years because she suffered from convulsion.
Read full story below...
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.
Culled from Channels TV
