The bungalow situated on Fast Fast junction, Olaogun area, along Old Ife Road, Ibadan, Oyo State, is no doubt an old one, with some of its rusted roofing sheets held in place with disused tyres and stones.
As the Nigerian Tribune approached the house on Monday, May 30, bow-legged Madam Olatutu Awoniran, in her 70s, wobbled to welcome this writer.
The visit was a follow-up to the story of the woman who was mistaken for a human trafficker when she was seen with seven children at Idi Ape area of Ibadan. Police investigations later revealed that the children were indeed her grandchildren and had been in her care since their father, her son, died in 2015.
With her, when the Nigerian Tribune went visiting, were some of her seven grandchildren who were the focus of the cameras on Friday, May 27, at the police headquarters, Eleiyele, Ibadan. But unlike that day when the children were decked in Ankara dresses sewn from the same fabric, some of the children who were around wore dirty, oversized dresses. One of them, a male, wore a dirty female oversized blouse which formed a dress, with the buttons meant for the front turned to the back.
The grandmother, Madam Awoniran tried to look decent by wearing her Sunday best and tying gele because of the Nigerian Tribune that was visiting her, but it was obvious that she was living in penury except for the food items she got from the Oyo State Police Command that Friday. The story of how she got to the police was interesting.
According to the state Commissioner of Police, Leye Oyebade, who donated food items such as bags of rice, beans, vegetable and palm oil, cartons of biscuits, tubers of yam and loaves of bread to the matriarch on behalf of the state command, “on May 25, a patrol team intercepted a 75-year-old with seven children. Members of the public were apprehensive of her being involved in human trafficking or having possession of them without their knowledge.
“But we got the children’s biological mother, investigated and established that the old woman was their grandmother and did not commit any crime. We learnt that she went to a media house to solicit for funds for the upkeep of the children and was on her way back home when she was noticed by those who suspected her.
“We decided to look at it from human angle and the police command is giving the food items out for their upkeep. The issue brought out by investigation is that the family needs assistance.” He, however, enjoined other members of the public to show love and concern by contributing towards the upkeep of the children.
Saturday Tribune learnt that except one out of the children who was delivered as a single baby, others came in multiples. Narrating the experience that got her involved with the police, Mama Awoniran said she decided to take her grandchildren to a television station in Ibadan to seek help from good Nigerians to take care of them.
“The children belong to my last born, Olusola Idowu Awoniran, who died on August 1, 2015. When I got to the TV station, I was told that the person to attend to me could not be reached and I should come back at another time. As I walked back home, some people accosted me and asked of how I got the seven children I had with me.
“I told them the children are my son’s, but they did not believe me. They said I went to steal the children. I was ordered to sit down and the people went for the police. One of the children kept telling the crowd that I was their father’s mother. Policemen came from Agodi Division and when they interrogated me, I repeated my earlier statement and went further to tell them that their mother was alive and I could take them to her.
“From Agodi Division, I was taken to Eleiyele police command headquarters and was transferred to the Anti-Kidnapping section. The police put me in their patrol van and I took them to the residence of the children’s mother. She confirmed that I was the children’s grandmother and that she gave birth to 10 children, but three of them died.
‘When the police got the truth, the Commissioner of Police had compassion for me and said he would not allow me to go empty handed. That was how he gave me bags of rice, beans, tubers of yam, cartons of biscuit, bread, palm oil and vegetable oil.”
Expressing her appreciation towards the police commissioner for the food items given to her, which she said transformed the way they lived before her encounter with the law enforcement agents, Mama Awoniran appealed to Nigerians to still come to her aid to give the children sound education and for her to have a decent accommodation where she and her grandchildren could live unlike the poor one they currently live in.
(Tribune)
