I am not proud of myself but I did what any mother who is desperate would do. In these days of kidnap and rape, I exposed my teenage daughter to evil men and I am really sorry. I used her as bait for food. I am sorry.
So this is what happened.
I lost my husband several years ago and feeding my five children has been a burden. At the early stage, when my husband died, his brothers came and distributed my three of children among their families, remaining the last two with me. But two of my children ran back home after a few months saying they were being maltreated by their father’s family.
I didn’t ask them to run, I didn’t even know they were being maltreated but as a mother, this information made me sad and I let them stay even though I knew I had no means of caring for them. They are my children after all.
When their father’s eldest brother came to tell me he heard my children were back home with me, I said yes, they were but I would not allow them go back, he told me I was on my own and since then, no help came from them. The only good thing we have is this decking house my husband built before he died. We couldn’t afford to build the upper part and we couldn’t even afford to roof it but it is our house.
I work night and day to feed these children. I have three boys and two girls, the eldest is a girl, she is 16 years old and had just finished secondary school when the incident happened.
My daughter began to work for one woman who cooked at Ijora, not far from where we live, so we often get left overs…sometimes, not all the time but my daughter had to stop because she said one customer was always touching her breasts and when he did one time, she poured soup on him…she was asked to leave the buka because they said it was rudeness to customer and she wasted food. So no money, no food…
Like I said, food is scarce; I have borrowed money so much so that, I have devised several ways out of our house because of avoiding the routes I know my creditors live.
So that day, in fact, before then, we hadn’t eaten food in two days because no food…my children often go to the market to fish sellers, they collects the fish guts, we season with salt and boil and sometimes, we buy dry pepper to make stew and eat with eba.
That day there was no food and I needed to get something for my children, so I took my daughter along with me to the market so we could be alabaru, that is, load carrier.
I had helped a woman load up food stuff at the market and promised her I would go deliver the load into her car, where the car was parked is far from where she shopped. I left my daughter with the woman, promising to come back to pick up the rest of the load.
I didn’t go back.
I didn’t plan on not going back but as I carried the load off, I began to think of how the items I carried would go a long way to feed my children.
Though the milk and sugar would be luxuries for my children but the yam, the garri, the rice, the noodles…we would eat this for one month or more because I would ration it…I had these thoughts in my head as I walked to the car where the woman’s driver was waiting.
At the last minute, I found my legs walking towards the opposite direction behind several locked shops in the market; as soon as my brain registered what I was doing because I swear, I was just walking, I didn’t fully understand what I was doing.
As soon as I realized it, I just hurried to one lane of abandoned stalls in the market; that side is usually where people who have no homes sleep, the people who bought stalls there don’t get customers because of where it is located, so that area is always empty during the day and full at night. Anyway, I walked there and quickly, off loaded the items into an old sack I found lying there, someone must have been sleeping in it. I packed all the items in it and climbed the small fence dividing the market and the car park and trekked home from there.
I kept looking back, I kept expecting some people to shout thief…nobody came after me…
I left my daughter there, I knew they would detain her, they could even accuse her of knowing I planned to steal but she didn’t know. I swear, she’s totally innocent.
The reason I left her there is because after all said and done, she would be released because she didn’t steal anything, I am the one who did. Eventually, she would even be able to find her way home. I was also hoping on the benevolence of the woman whose load I carried, she’s a mother like me, I hoped that she would understand that I did it because of hunger not for any other reason.
As it turned out, the woman did not want police matter, she said that she believed it was hunger that made me do it. But the market vigilante said they didn’t want people like me to give their market a bad name, so they held my daughter.
Around maybe 8pm in the evening, the vigilantes came along with my daughter back to our house. After detaining her, the woman had called them to release her but they insisted on following her home.
I was shocked to see my daughter being escorted back and immediately I saw them, I just began to plead. I told them I did what I did for my children and indeed, as soon as I got home, I immediately cooked rice for my children, we added dried pepper and we ate.
I know I have set a bad example for my children; I know my daughter could have been arrested, raped even or kidnapped but I had hungry children at home, I did what I could to save them.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)