Another child theft!
•Boy, 4, stolen from school
By Vincent Ukpong Kalu
Saturday, September 6, 2008

•Ekene Photo: THE SUN PUBLISHING

Living index

It has been pains and sorrow of imaginable proportion in the family of Philip Anijetu of No. 4, Adeoye Street, Amukoko, Orile, Lagos, since May 28, when an unidentified woman went to the Sari Igamu Primary School II and took away their four-year-old son, Ekene.

The family has done everything humanly possible to trace the whereabouts of the boy to no avail.

While speaking to Saturday Sun, the hardness in the father of the boy, Phillip, a security personnel with G .U.O Motors melted and he broke down in tears as he narrated the ugly incident and the psychological torture his family is passing through since Ekene went to school with his elder siblings and never returned. According to him, if he were dead and the corpse seen and buried, by now they would have come back from the shock to face the reality.

Phillip’s three children attend Sari Igamu Primary School, Amukoko. On a school day the three siblings would leave home together and at the close of school, they would return home at the same time and wait for the return of their mother, a petty trader at Coker near G.U.O new site. Ekene was in the nursery section of the school; his elder brother about seven years old is in the junior primary while his eldest sister is in primary six.

Ekene and his elder brother close early and they would wait for their sister, Ogochukwu to close and the three would go back home together since Ekene may not go on his own considering age.

Evil woman walks in
Sari Igamu Primary School II and three other primary schools are in the Ladipo School complex. There is an entrance gate to the school complex. Though the gate is not locked but there is always a security man at the entrance. The complex is fenced round but a section of the fence has collapsed which gives anybody access into the school without passing through the entrance.

On May 28, after the junior primary had closed for the day, as usual the two children were waiting for their elder sister in primary six. It was during the wait for her in front of one of the classroom blocks that an unknown woman in trousers came into the school through the broken down fence and met them. She told them that their mother asked her to bring them home. Ekene’s elder brother was said to have objected and told her that their mother had insisted they should wait for their sister to close and take them home.

As they argued on this, the strange woman told the senior boy to go and call their sister. The child innocently left his younger brother with the stranger and ran to her sister’s class to call her. By the time he returned with his sister the woman had gone with Ekene. She quickly informed the teacher who advised her to go home and ascertain the situation. She went home immediately and to her surprise, Ekene was not at home and she ran back to the school. She alerted her father about 4 pm who promptly arrived the school and asked some people around. They all feigned ignorance, and said they knew nothing about that.

No trace of Ekene
“The incident happened on May 28 and the following day was a public holiday. On Friday, May 30 we reported the matter to the police at Amukoko. The teacher and the headmistress were arrested but released after they said they didn’t know anything about the matter.

Police not helpful
According to Phillip, the police at Amukoko handled the matter with levity. “Police is doing nothing, we’ve gone to Iponri and Orile police stations. We wanted to go to Ikeja, and were told not to worry that the ones we have reported to would do it. But since then, we haven’t seen the Investigative Police Officer.

The world collapses on us
Philip said words are not enough to describe the torment the entire family is going through and is appealing to whoever that is keeping the boy to return him. According to him since that day, every member of the family has lost appetite for food. “ My wife has not been going out since then. She stays indoors. We go from one church to another. My other children are crying all the time but I’m just managing to calm them down. I know how we share together in love and play. It is very sad. I don’t suspect anybody.

They told me in one church that the child is alive and that we should continue praying, for him to come out. Some churches said he is with a family looking for a child, another said he is in the hands of ritualist. We are confused. We are praying for God’s intervention.

Long list of missing children
Sometime in June 2007, little Faith Nwanokpo was abducted by the girlfriend of her parent’s neighbor at the Chundit military Barrack in Zaria, Kaduna State.
According to police source, a good Samaritan later saw the three-year-old Faith wandering aimlessly at the Orile Iganmu motor park in Lagos weeks after the theft was reported by Saturday Sun. She was taken to the Orile Iganmu police station.

The alleged kidnapper had come together with Faith to see her boyfriend at the motor park but in the course of their meeting, Faith strayed from her but was later picked up and brought to the police station.

Same was the testimony of the family of Momah whose daughter Ogochukwu was found in Umuahia a month after she went missing from her school, Handmaid International Catholic School, Aguda, Surulere, Lagos. She was kidnapped by persons yet unknown.
While the parents of Ogochukwu are accusing the school authorities of theft/abduction of the little girl under their care, the school, in its reaction recently, said the police should look beyond the confines of the school and extend their investigative machinery to Momah’s family, especially, his business associates.

The sudden discovery of the loss of 3-year-old pupil from school on Monday 19, May has continued to raise more questions than answers in police circles. Although the circumstances surrounding how she was found were yet to be clearly stated, the simple report was that the little girl was seen last weekend by a concerned policeman identified as Sergeant John who subsequently took her to the Zone 9, Command in Umuahia. Ogochukwu was picked wandering aimlessly in a lonely dark street in far away Umuahia, Abia State with her head shaved clean. The police in the area were said to had quickly gone on the air, calling on parents of the girl to come and identify her. Luckily, while the girl was shown on NTA, one of the residents of the area who had earlier read about the ransom of N500,000 promised by the school for anybody that will give useful information which will lead to the discovery of the girl's whereabouts, recognized her name and quickly alerted his brother that lives in Satellite Town Lagos. He told his brother to quickly locate the school in Aguda so that they will claim the ransom. The brother then swung into action and combed all the nooks and crannies of Aguda until he was able to locate the Catholic school.

The Headmistress of the school after listening to him took him to Zone 2 in Onikan where they also informed the police. The school authorities reportedly went further to contact one of their branches in Abia State and they detailed some Reverend sisters to go and confirm whether the girl was actually at Zone 9 in Umuahia, which they did. The following day, both the Headmistress of the school, Reverend Sister Lucy, some other reverend sisters, the mother of the missing girl and some police officers from Zone 2, Lagos proceeded to Umuahia where they met the missing girl at the police station.
One thing Mrs Rita Momah would not forget in a hurry is the fact that Ogochukwu was already being brainwashed to believe a certain Mummy Ngozi was her mother.

According to her, “every story Ogo told me since she got back was centered around one strange Mummy Ngozi”.

Ogochukwu was able to tell her mother her experience of how she cried all day in the village where she was kept that she wanted to go back to her mum.
She said each time she cried, they promised her that they would go back to the city soon. with Mummy Ngozi.

Up till now, the police have not made it public how and who took Ogochukwu to Umuahia from Lagos.

Anita Okoro, a 10-month old baby went missing after a church service in Effurun, Delta State last month and was found eleven days after. She was found with a 19-year-old Miss Onome Ariko and her boyfriend Victor Eboh who were arrested for alleged abduction of the child from the Christ Anglican Church, Esedo Effurun , Uvwie Local Government Area on the August 10.
It was gathered that nemesis caught up with the couple when curious neighbours raised the alarm, barely 24 hours after Onome showed up at Ovwian community, claiming to have just given birth to the child.

Another child, Osondu Martins Osondu, 14, was sent to purchase some items at a nearby shop on Ejire Street, Ajangbadi in the Ojo Local Government Area of Lagos State last Democracy Day, May 29 but has not returned home since then.

Not left in the long list is the Opara family whose three-year-old son vanished into thin air some time in July this year. According to her guardian, Cynthia Uboh, Uche had left school in the company of other children in the neighbourhood at Nosamu Street Ajegunle, Lagos and could not return home up till now.

In Koma, a secluded ethnic group in Adamawa parents raised the alarm before the state government last month that those who claim to help them get civilized have turned to child thieves, and not less than 116 of their children taken away by NGOs and missionaries would not be located any more.
According to them, over 89 children were taken away from the community in the past nine years but no one could trace their whereabouts.

Some of them were taken away in the name of excursion or exchange programme without returning them.

Mallam Aliyu, a community leader in Koma and a parent of one of the children had alleged that his child was missing and claimed that the coordinator of a missionary organization had informed him last year that his child had died in a plane crash and offered him money which he rejected.
These children it was alleged were found at a border town with some people trying to smuggle them away to a neighboring country.

Some of these children are yet to be traced as some of the accused organizations claimed that they where still on exchange programme and still need time too check where they are.