A woman from Delta State who was kidnapped
nine years ago by her lover has miraculously regained her freedom, Sun newspaper reports.
The woman who lived in the Ikotun Egbe area of Lagos stepped out of
her lover’s house with her four children for the first time in nine
years. The woman said to be a graduate and speaks fluent English
narrated her ordeal to the people in the area who gathered around to
have a glim of her.
Sunday Sun was told by eye witnesses that the woman’s lover
who hails from Ekiti State loved her so much and wanted to marry her but
because her family was against the relationship, he decided to kidnap
her for keeps, to keep her away from her parents. He later took her to a
wooden house he built for her in Okerube area of Abaranje, Ikotun,
Lagos.
Neighbours said the woman claimed not to have known where she was
kept because her lover would go to the market to get food for her and
her children very early in the morning and threatened that she would
die if she stepped out of the house. When he leaves, he makes sure he
locks the house so she had no way of coming out. Sunday Sun was told that it was in the wooden house that the woman gave birth to her four children while the husband acted as the midwife.
Three weeks ago, her lover fell ill and could not as usual go out to
fetch food all through the period of his illness. Extremely starved and
weak, the woman forced him out on Friday, October 24, 2014 to get what
they would eat and drink before they all die of hunger and thirst.
Luckily for her and the children, the man forgot to lock the house.It
was at this point that the woman decided to urinate and was shocked to
see what had happened around her.
When the people in the area discovered her, they came out in their
numbers and started questioning her as they thought she was mad. She and
her children were so much emaciated but from her responses and body
language, they realized she and the children were okay and mentally
sound. While in forced confinement, she had taught the children their
lessons such that they spoke very well when with their mother in the
crowd. She remembered her sister’s contact and one of the sympathizers
quickly put a call through to her. In about 30 minutes, the sister
arrived at the scene and took her and the children away.
Eyewitnesses reported that her husband had not returned from the
market when she was taken away. They said she was so upset at the
forceful rescue that she was screaming at the top of her voice: “My
husband oh, my husband!” thereby getting her sister angry and shouting
back at her; “which yeye husband you dey call?”
A lady who lived in the neighbourhood said the man built the wooden
house near her house. Whenever people go near the place to see if anyone
lives there, he would use a catapult and stone to hit them and chase
them away. She said: “Anyone who tries to get close, this man will use
catapult and stone to shoot them so people had to let him be thinking he
was mentally unbalanced. We didn’t even know he was living there with
five people. When the man got back, he found the house empty. He began
to shout, ‘’I hate human beings, that is why I isolated myself and my
family from them.’’Can you imagine”?
It is uncertain if the man is himself a graduate or if he is
mentally stable but one thing is certain: He was not ready to set his
“wife” free and was very upset when she left.