Juliana Francis
Why would a pastor, watch and allow his wife to practically
get away with murder?
This was one of the questions that raced the minds of most
of the people that listened, rapt in attention as 14-year-old Uchechukwu Oji,
narrate the story of how she came to Lagos State, in search of a better life,
but ended handed over from one madam to another as a house help. After months
of being kicked, pummeled and starved, she bolted.
She was discovered by a concerned Nigerian, who witnessed
the altercation between her and a bus conductor. Uchechukwu was said to have
boarded the bus from Ago-Palace way, heading to Cele.
The bus conductor had wanted to collect his fare, but the
girl had no money to pay. The interest of the concerned Nigerian had become
aroused and she had probed further into the teenage girl’s predicament. It was
soon discovered that the girl was ready to embark on a journey to Enugu State,
without a dime in her pocket.
The woman who started changing the well laid down course of
Uchechukwu’s life was her aunt, identified as Chibugo Mba, married to none
other person than a pastor!
The pastor apparently
did not realize that his wife depriving and denying Uchechukwu from going to
school, was tantamount to killing the girl, whose dream was to go to school.
Rather than sermonized to his wife on the sins of trafficking impressionable
young girls, he had allegedly kept quite, watching the scenario. He perhaps did
not mind any treatment being meted out on the girl as long as his church
members got a house help.
Uchechukwu was a starry girl in October 2010, when her aunt,
Chibugo came to the village in Ojie River, Oyin village to pick her.
The clever woman had painted Lagos as city literarily
littered with gold and silver. Chibugo further made it seemed as if she was
granting a favour to the girl and her family, promising to send her to the best
of school.
By then Uchechukwu was in senior secondary school (SS1).
Just the thought of Lagos made her adventurous spirit to rise. When her parents
asked her if she was interested in going to Lagos with Chibugo, she did not
think twice. Scared that her parents changed their minds, she quickly packed
her things. Her heart was filled with joy and she thought of stories she would
some day tell her friends at the village.
But the joy in her heart had since turned to sorrow after
she discovered that her aunt had played a fast one on her and her parents.
The scales fell off her eyes and the stars in eyes dimmed
right on the very day she arrived Chibugo’s home.
She said: “Just few hours after we got to her house, my aunt
called a woman I later got to know was their church member. We call the church
member Mama Imesioma. When my aunt called her, she said, ‘the girl is here!’ I
now asked her why she lied to my parents, she said I should shut up. She forced
me to follow her to Surulere, there she handed me over to Mama Imesioma.”
Uchechukwu claimed that life with Mama Imesioma was hell.
“In the morning, I won’t be given food.
They did not enroll me in any school. I got to market with them. I
complained to my aunt that all my mates were going to school except me. Mama
Imesioma will give me N55 for feeding. I’m supposed to use N50 for food and N5
for water. The N55 was usually money for feeding in the morning, afternoon and
night!”
As if that was not enough, Uchechukwu further claimed that
Mama Imesioma ordered to always wait for her to first walk past if she saw her
coming, since she was the madam of the house and of the girl. But on a
particular day that Uchechukwu saw her mistress coming, she decided to wait
until the woman walked past to avoid attracting her ire. Unfortunately
Uchechukwu was also carrying something on that fateful day. After waiting
endlessly for her madam to first walk past as she had been ordered she became
worried again.
“I was worried that she would ask why I was standing there,
wasting time when I had something in my hands and had other things to do. I
attempted to walk past, but made sure my body was several inches away from
her.”
Just as she was about to walk past, the woman allegedly
pounced on her with a broom, beating the living day light out of her.
She complained once again to Chibugo, who now took her away
from there. But Uchechukwu’s heart felt relieve was truncated when her aunt,
rather than take her back to village as she wanted or to her own home, instead
took her to another woman, who apparently needed a maid.
“Chibugo took me to another woman called Mama Chioma. The
woman has six children. Even there, they did not fix me in any school. In that
house, I go to bed at 2am and would be awoken by 4am to start preparation for
the day and the children’s school. Mama Chioma used to beat me with turning
garri. I told Mama Chioma that I wanted to leave. But whenever I said this she
would beat me. Today when I said it again, she threw my things outside.”
Feeling like it was a divine intervention, Uchechukwu picked
her meager possessions and started hiking to nowhere in particular, but her
plan was to go back to Enugu State, to her parents.
She could not understand where she was going, but she
boarded a bus, where she met the cantankerous conductor and later rescued by
the concerned Nigerian.
Police spokesman, Frank Mba, said police would have given
the girl money to head back to her village, but felt it was too risky. When the
girl was asked the phone of any of her relative, she gave 07056191678 as one of
her brother’s called Samuel phone number. When Mba called the man, he accepted
that the girl was his sister. Mba suggested that Samuel link up with any of
their relatives in Lagos, to come forward to take Uchechukwu, rather than leave
wandering the streets of Lagos.
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