The worrisome trend of parents isolating and locking up their children and grown up relatives in inhuman conditions is becoming the norm in Nigeria, especially in the North. With more than 12 of such cases reported in 2020, and despite the public outcry that trailed the developments, the trend seems unabated and underreported, raising the question of what measures the government and relevant agencies have put in place in curbing this negative development. Daily Trust examines the issues.
In 2020, Nigerians were alerted to the inhuman treatment of children by their parents. Some of the victims were locked up for 30 years. The victims, who ranged from two years to their twenties, were subjected to barbaric treatment, including starvation, while some were confined to a room where they ate, slept and passed out body wastes.
While there were few reported cases in the media at the end of 2020, leading to a seeming end to the ugly trend, the story of Aisha (Ummi) Jibril, who was locked up in a room where she slept, defecated and urinated for more than 10 years by her parents, surfaced. Many people condemned the action of her parents.
The scars on her legs showed her long battle in isolation in a room, while her unkempt hair and tattered cloths when she was rescued by the police in Kano State showed her poor living condition.
Investigation by Daily Trust revealed that Aisha’s real age is 20, as against the 15 years ascribed to her by the police, and that she was confined for more than 10 years by her biological parent.
It was alleged that the girl was mentally ill from her younger years, which made her parents pay less attention to her as they looked after the other three children.
Most of the parents caught in a similar action alleged that their victims had medical issues; hence they were kept away.
“It was not really the sickness that changed Aisha’s looks; it was starvation from her mother. The mother would leave the house around 7am and go back home during Magrib prayers. So the girl stayed without food. And as she could not walk, she lived in her urine and defecation,” a neighbour who asked not to be named, had said.
Aisha’s case was similar to that of a 10-year-old boy, Jibril Aliyu, who was chained to a wooden pillar in Kebbi State. Just like Jibril, Aisha could not walk despite her emaciated body frame.
Her situation typifies several cases of children being maltreated by their parents or relatives in Nigeria. This has led to growing concerns over the rise in cases of parents locking or starving their children for whatsoever reason. Due to solitary confinement and starvation, most of the victims have stunted growth. They are malnourished and hardly look like other children of their age.
Recall that three persons, including Ahmed Aminu, Ibrahim Lawan and a female teenager, Mummy, were rescued from confinement last year.
They were subjected to different forms of torture that left them incapacitated due to lack of medical care and proper feeding by their guardians.
Ahmad, 33, was rescued at the Farawa Quarters of Kumbotso Local Government after seven years of solitary confinement. He was said to have been confined by his father, Malam Ibrahim Aminu, for allegedly indulging in drug abuse.
He was rescued following an alarm raise by a concerned neighbour, Rahma.
Two days after his rescue, another person, Ibrahim Lawan, a 36-year-old man, was also rescued at the Sheka Quarters of Kano metropolis.
The victims were moved to Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital for treatment.
Our correspondent gathered that two of the victims had already been discharged from hospital and had been reunited with their families.
An official of the Department of Social Welfare, Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital, Hajiya Gambo, who spoke to Daily Trust, said Ahmad Aminu’s case was the most complicated. He, however, sounded hopeful that he was getting better.
Speaking about the status of the litigations instituted in respect of the cases, she said both the father and stepmother of Ahmad Aminu, popularly known as Namama, had served a three-month jail term over the issue.
For the teenage girl, the social welfare officer said she had recovered and had been enrolled in school already.
Gory tales as situation is now a norm in the North
The case of Jibril in Kebbi State garnered responses from international organisations and opened a floodgate of parents’ brutality to their children.
In Kano, the story of Aminu, who was locked up by his father in a garage typified a weird punishment for an outcast. Ahmed’s father and stepmother, who were allegedly responsible for the inhuman treatment, were arrested when he was discovered in 2020. The man was said to have been locked up for more than seven years.
Also in Kano, a 55-year-old man was chained to a log of wood in a dark room for 30 years. In 2020, a non-governmental organisation, Human Rights Network (HRN), said it rescued 12 people in the state, out of which seven were children.
In April 2021, a hairstylist, Joy Fatoba, allegedly locked up her two-year-old twins over the inability to meet their needs after their father absconded before their delivery. She had wanted to starve the children to death, having locked them for two days before the intervention of police officers in Ekiti State.
A two-year-old child was also locked up in a dark room by his father for two years in Delta State. The boy, Zino, was rescued in January 2021. Zino’s mother left him with his biological father and stepmother, who went on to starve and maltreat him.
In Osun State, Opeyemi Olatoke was locked up by her father for five years. The victim was locked up in an abandoned house in Ikirun, Ifelodun Local Government Area of the state but was rescued by police officers in January.
Aisha’s parents justify their action
Aisha’s father had allegedly said she was locked up because she was physically challenged while she was being fed “once in a while.”
Most of these cases follow the same narratives of the parents alleging the mental or physical health and wellbeing of the victims. Aisha, the Kano girl rescued last week, was maltreated by her mother, according to her neighbours.
“Aisha was not really locked inside a room, she lived in isolation. She didn’t see anybody to give her food or even take her to the toilet when she wanted to ease herself,” a neighbour said.
Another neighbour, Maimuna Abdullahi, said the mother treated the girl as if she was not her biological mother.
“She doesn’t stay in the house. She spends the day in the neighbourhood. She neither comes to check on the girl nor send her younger sister to give her food. The girl remained in the house alone; sometimes you will find her in her urine or excreta,” she said.
Another neighbour, who simply gave his name as Khalifa, who has been operating a drug store near Aisha’s house for the past 10 years, said he was unaware of the girl until the police visited the house.
A relative, Zaiha Musa, said she knew about the poor living condition of Aisha, adding that she tried to convince Rabi to improve the child’s living conditions.
“Whenever I talk to her to feed Aisha, she would become angry. Sometimes she would just go out of my house angrily without even collecting food. Instead of going back home she would rather go to another neighbour’s house. That is the reason we stopped talking to her on the girl,” she said.
Aisha’s father threatened to beat me – Whistle-blower
Ummi Usman, who reported the case to the police, said the victim’s father threatened to beat her up.
“Aisha’s father and her two brothers came and threatened to beat me. I did it for the sake of Allah and to rescue the girl. My instinct tells me that the girl’s life would be better, Insha Allah,” she said.
She said she relocated to the area three years ago but had remained uncomfortable since she saw the poor living condition of the girl.
“One day, my daughter went to Aisha’s house with some other girls in the area. It happened that we were planning to go somewhere together, and as I was in a hurry to take my daughter, I just went to the house, where I met a thin-skinned, weak girl sitting on her knees. Since that time, I became worried about the condition of the girl. I wanted to talk to the mother, but I was afraid of what would happen because I learnt that she didn’t want people to talk to her about the girl.
“After some time, I confronted the mother and told her that it was her responsibility to take care of her daughter, even if she was sick. She abused me, calling me names. In the night when her husband came back from the market, I went back to the house and explained everything to him. I even asked why he didn’t force his wife to take care of the girl. He told me that he tried his best for the wife to change but she refused. But he pleaded with me not to report the case as I threatened the wife,” she said.
Ummi added that she reported the case when the girl’s condition deteriorated, adding that though some people were not happy with what she did, she was not worried.
Victim responding to treatment, investigation ongoing – Police
Meanwhile, the spokesman of the Kano police command, DSP Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa, said the victim was already responding to treatment at the Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital.
He said the fleeing father, Mohammed Jibrin, had been arrested and released on bail, along with his wife, Rabi Mohammed.
During investigation, the mother of the confined teenager said that Aisha was confined as a result of mental health. At the time she was rescued, our correspondent observed that she was not able to stand.
“She claimed that the girl was sick, but when we asked her whether they had ever taken the child to the hospital, she said no. According to her parents, they could not take the child to the hospital because of poverty,” the police spokesman said.
He added that investigation on the matter was ongoing as directed by the commissioner of police in the state, Sama’ila Dikko.
We are handicapped – NAPTIP
Reacting to reported cases of locking children up under whatever circumstance, the head of the Department of Press and Public Relations, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Stella Nezan, said the duties of the agency stopped when the children were rescued. She added that the act is a violation of the victims’ rights.
She said, “In 2019, the Kano zonal command dealt with such cases which the culprits were the victims’ parents. Mostly, the parents claimed the victims had psychiatric problems and that the cost of medical treatment was beyond their capacity.’’
She said because the three cases were not within the trafficking in persons’ threshold but violence against persons, the agency stopped at the point of rescuing the children, treatment and transfer to sister agencies to handle further.
“Again, since the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, 2015, which the agency has jurisdiction only in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), it could not go ahead with prosecution in those cases. There were also ‘reform schools’ that administered similar corporal treatment in Kano, Kaduna and Katsina states, but they have been closed.
“The schools include Mallam Niga School in Katsina, Mallam Mamman and Mallam Alhajiji schools in Kano,” she added.
Psychologists condemn act
Dr Abdurrahman Ashiru, a registrar in the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Maiduguri, said the practice constituted child abuse and neglect and is common in low and middle-income countries like Nigeria.
He said generally cases were underreported, adding that the negative effects include depression, suicide, stress, and post-traumatic disorder.
According to him, the way forward is for government to implement policies that help in the reduction of poverty and assist families and children in improving access to general health care.
He advised that another way is to enlighten families and children on what constitutes abuse and encourage them to always talk and express themselves.
He said there was the need for intervention for children already abused and a platform to link them up with health care facilities, where they can be evaluated and followed up because the psychological impacts of the abuse are many and likely to have a long term effect on the child.
He said to end the practice, there should be sanctions and penalties for parents that abuse children to serve as a deterrent to others.
A psychologist, Dr Yemi Atibioke, said parents locked up their children for security purpose and as a means of punishment for wrongdoing. He added that the practice, however, had negative impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of the children.
He said locking up a child was like putting him or her in a minor prison, adding that “the child could begin to develop some mood disorders and withdraw from others. Depression could set in because there are some benefits that social interaction provides when people relate and express themselves. When a child is restricted, either for punishment or any reason, it has consequences.”
He said that rather than lock up children for safety, parents should look for someone trustworthy to care for them.
He said it should be rarely used as punishment, but if necessary, it should be within an acceptable period of time where they could be watched, and within the environment.
We should have strong legal instrument to deal with violators
A legal practitioner, Abdullahi Aliyu, said governments at all levels must strengthen their legal systems to punish parents and relatives that subjected their wards to inhuman treatment.
“It is unbelievable that a human being will be confined to a secluded place for over 30 years simply because he has challenges,” the lawyer said.
“And as you can see, most of the parents get bail and go back home…The cases would drag on for years until they fizzle out and this is not healthy. We need serious legislations and enforcement to protect the weak,” he said.
From: Lubabatu I. Garba and Richard P. Ngbokai (Kano), Ibrahim Haruna, Taiwo Adeniyi, Olayemi John-Mensah, Ojoma Akor & Nana Yahaya (Abuja)
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