According to Mr and Mrs Osarhiakhi Ebohon, on June 13, 2015, a baby was dumped at Obazuaye Street in Evbuareke Quarters, Uselu, Benin City, at about 11am.
Residents saw a newborn baby wrapped in a black nylon bag. The Ebohons, among other residents, placed curses on whoever might have thrown the child away.
The police was invited to take away the baby who was later sent to the Ministry of Women Affairs in Edo State.
That night, Mrs. Ebohon observed that their oldest daughter, Joy, was acting different, so she tried to find out what her daughter’s problem was, to no avail.
So she told the husband to probe Joy to know what the problem was.
At about 5am the following day, Mr Ebohon woke Joy up and forcibly asked her to tell him the cause of her unease.
Joy then opened up to her parents that she was the one who dumped the child on the street.
Her angry father went to the police to report the matter.
Mr Ebohon then handed over the daughter to the police for prosecution.
She was arraigned before a Magistrate Court in Benin by the police on June 17 and was remanded in Oko prisons pending advice from the state Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) on the matter.
Now, Mr and Mrs Ebohon are appealing for the release of the daughter whose first son is barely two years old.
Narrating the incident, Ebohon, a farmer, said:
“I decided to go to the village to farm because of the difficulty to get money to train my children. My daughter, Osarhiakhi Joy, in jail now, left secondary school some years back. She is my eldest daughter and she is 28 years old.
About five years ago, she wrote her SSCE and passed all her papers and got admission into the College of Education, Ekiadolor, but I couldn’t pay the fees. I begged her to be patient till some other time. Before I knew it, she became pregnant. I called the boy responsible and told him that I didn’t want any stupid act and asked if he was going to marry her and he said yes.
Then I told him the condition that my daughter wanted to further her education by studying pharmacy and he said okay. So she gave birth to the first child, a boy, who is about two years now. After that, she told me she couldn’t be staying at home, that she wanted to learn a trade before gaining admission and pending when the husband, or myself would be financially okay to send her back to school. I said it was okay. That is how she started learning fashion designing.
She told her husband to come and beg me so that, at times, she could be staying with me because her place of work is closer to us and they don’t have their personal house. That is how she stated living with us again. I never knew she was pregnant this second time because I don’t stay in Benin; even the mother that stays in Benin never knew about it. I didn’t know she will be this clever to cover-up without our notice. “On June13, I came to Benin from the village to relax.
I discovered people were shouting that they discovered a baby very close to my compound. I never had the belief that it was my daughter who gave birth to the baby. I was taking my siesta that afternoon when I woke up and ran to the place and I had been hearing the cry of a little baby thinking it was the next compound. I and my wife were among the first person to place curse on the culprit. I was the same person who organized to go call the police that what the person did was bad.
“The next day when I was ready to go back to the village, my wife called me to say I should ask our daughter that the way she was looking at her, there were changes in her. Then I called my daughter at about 5 am and told her to tell me the truth so that I could help her. That was when she told me that she was the one, I was about to collapse but as a man I controlled myself and asked her who was responsible for the pregnancy. She said it was the husband though they are not married.
When I asked her why she behaved that way, she said when she told her husband about the pregnancy, he told her to go and abort
