What kind of world is this? Where a woman will abandon her own flesh and blood? I can’t believe it no matter how hard I try to understand her reasons for doing it. I can’t accept that abandoning a baby is the only solution to unwanted pregnancy.
I’m a police officer. I won’t tell you my name because I don’t want it published apart from that, I don’t trust you journalists but I can tell you exactly what happened here that day.
I was on duty a few days ago when a group of people came to the station to report the case of an abandoned baby. They said they heard a baby crying by the canal on the way to Oshodi, just by the railway road. They said they traced the noise to find a baby caked in mud. They rescued the baby and removed the dirt that had entered into the baby’s mouth. Being a woman myself with five children of my own, my motherly instincts kicked in. I just melted.
I took the baby from them. It was a baby boy, in fact, the umbilical cord was still fresh, meaning the baby had just been born. It also means the mother gave birth close to the canal and most probably she did her own delivery by herself. You understand?
But what I can never understand is a human being, the mother of the baby most probably, throwing her own one day old baby away. This boy could be another Buhri, you never can tell. This is a country where you see women going for night vigil after night vigil asking God for children; some drinking concoction after concoction from babalawos and fake prophets just so that they can have children and somebody can dare to throw her own away. I don’t understand it.
So, I was very angry with whoever it was. I quickly rushed to my CO’s office and reported the case. I needed him to give me clearance to take the baby to the hospital. As soon as I told him the baby had been dangerously exposed, he gave me clearance and asked two of my male colleagues to go with me to the hospital. We went to the Lagos State University teaching Hospital (LASUTH) at Ikeja. And they immediately took charge to ensure the baby survives after being exposed to germs in the canal.
But before I go further, I noticed something before we left for the hospital. That day, about seven or more people brought the baby to the station; it was one elderly woman who carried the baby but many sympathisers followed her. You know Lagos people like to follow-follow and look-look; they all claimed they were witnesses. We asked them to write their statements before collecting the baby from them. This is standard procedure. None of them said they saw the woman who dumped the baby.
But one young girl who looked sickly came with them. She claimed she saw the mother of the baby. At first, I thought she was a mad woman because of the way she was looking but her clothes were quite clean and her hair was not untidy. Mad women don’t look like that. But this is Lagos, madness no dey show for face like that.
Anyway, the girl claimed she saw who dumped the baby. She said the woman brought the baby in a basket on her head and threw the baby away in the canal. She said she was too sick to challenge the woman. I asked her to come and write a statement and describe the woman she saw but she refused and said she couldn’t write in English. We asked her to write in her language, still, she said she couldn’t that she doesn’t know how to write.
‘Ok, tell me how it happened so I can write it for you.’ I remember saying to her.
“Aunty, I don tell you wetin I see. I no well, I wan go hospital’, that was all she said and I didn’t want to waste time with her because we were anxious to get the baby to the hospital for immediate care.
But when I got back, I was informed by one of my colleagues that the girl had been arrested. They said she fainted outside the station and when they tried to help her they found out that she was bleeding and that it seemed she was actually the one who dumped the baby in the canal.
I had to go back to the hospital with her and when doctors tested her, they discovered she had just had a baby. You see the way God works? The girl is still in the hospital. She has finally admitted to being the mother of the baby.
I don’t think she will get the baby again, sha. The boy now belongs to the government.