The woman who lived in the Ikotun
Egbe area of Lagos stepped out of her lover’s house with her four children for
the first time in nine years. The woman said to be a graduate and speaks
fluent English narrated her ordeal to the people in the area who gathered
around to have a glim of her.
Sunday Sun was told by eye
witnesses that the woman’s lover who hails from Ekiti State loved her so much
and wanted to marry her but because her family was against the relationship, he
decided to kidnap her
for keeps, to keep her away from her parents. He later
took her to a wooden house he built for her in Okerube area of Abaranje,
Ikotun, Lagos.
Neighbours said the woman claimed
not to have known where she was kept because her lover would go to the market
to get food for her and her children very early in the morning and threatened
that she would die if she stepped out of the house. When he leaves, he makes
sure he locks the house so she had no way of coming out. Sunday Sun was told
that it was in the wooden house that the woman gave birth to her four children
while the husband acted as the midwife.
Three weeks ago, her lover fell
ill and could not as usual go out to fetch food all through the period of his
illness. Extremely starved and weak, the woman forced him out on Friday,
October 24, 2014 to get what they would eat and drink before they all die of
hunger and thirst. Luckily for her and the children, the man forgot to lock the
house.It was at this point that the woman decided to urinate and was shocked to
see what had happened around her.
When the people in the area
discovered her, they came out in their numbers and started questioning her as
they thought she was mad. She and her children were so much emaciated but from
her responses and body language, they realized she and the children were okay
and mentally sound. While in forced confinement, she had taught the children
their lessons such that they spoke very well when with their mother in the
crowd. She remembered her sister’s contact and one of the sympathizers quickly
put a call through to her. In about 30 minutes, the sister arrived at the scene
and took her and the children away.
Eyewitnesses reported that her
husband had not returned from the market when she was taken away. They said she
was so upset at the forceful rescue that she was screaming at the top of her
voice: “My husband oh, my husband!” thereby getting her sister angry and
shouting back at her; “which yeye husband you dey call?”
A lady who lived in the
neighbourhood said the man built the wooden house near her house. Whenever
people go near the place to see if anyone lives there, he would use a catapult
and stone to hit them and chase them away. She said: “Anyone who tries to get
close, this man will use catapult and stone to shoot them so people had to let
him be thinking he was mentally unbalanced. We didn’t even know he was living
there with five people. When the man got back, he found the house empty. He
began to shout, ‘’I hate human beings, that is why I isolated myself and my
family from them.’’Can you imagine”?
It is uncertain if the man is
himself a graduate or if he is mentally stable but one thing is certain: He
was not ready to set his “wife” free and was very upset when she left.
Senzo Meyiwa during the CAF Champions League Final second leg in Cairo (Picture: AFP/Getty)
