Brutal attacks on stepchildren

Violent attack by jealous and envious stepmothers on their stepsons has assumed a frightening dimension in recent times especially in Northern Nigeria, where the polygamous family system is widespread. In most cases, children of broken homes are the ready victims as they live a life of agony, deprivation and forced labour from their stepmothers who misdirect their jealous anger on the hapless children. Earlier this week, a 17 year old married woman allegedly cut off the private organ of her 23 day-old stepson in Dafe village of Shiroro Local Government area of Niger State. Bara’atu Muhammad allegedly cut off Buhari Muhammad’s genitals out of jealousy. Niger State Police Command Public Relations Officer (PRO) DSP Bala Elkana said the suspect was arrested, arraigned at Magistrate Court 1 in Minna and thereafter remanded in Minna prison. Elkana said Bara’atu confessed that she used a knife to carry out the crime in their toilet after she took the child by force when he was playing in the house. Dr. Ibrahim Abdullahi of the IBB Specialist Hospital in Minna said the child’s private organ was cut off and could not be transplanted, an extremely wicked act. In May this year, 21-month old Musa was brutalized by his stepmother in Gulu village, Rimin Gado Local Government Area of Kano State. She cut his tongue, broke his arms and legs, damaged his right eye and castrated him with a blade. Musa became a victim of this heinous act because his parents are divorced and he was left in the care of his stepmother. He miraculously survived after he was taken to the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano and then a specialist hospital in Abuja. In April this year too, a 19 year old boy in Amenu Uburu, Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Anthony Anoke was admitted at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki after he was bathed with hot water by his step mother, Mrs. Uzoamaka Anoke. A month earlier, a 10-year-old girl, Fatima Abdulrashid, said her stepmother used molten polythene to torture her. Fatima, who was receiving treatment at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Shika, Zaria, said after her mother’s demise, her father took her sister and herself from Zaria to Gombe to live with their step-mother. Fatima said, “She started by denying us food. After that, she would to lock us in a room that is close to the toilet for days. She would burn polythene and hold it over our bodies so it drops. I was lucky to have survived as my younger sister, Narjis, died of torture.” Beside the cruelty of stepmothers, some children also fall victims of societal disorientation occasioned by belief in superstition and witch-craft. For selfish reasons and wickedness, witch doctors and fake clerics plant seeds of discord in unsuspecting families by stereotyping children. In January this year, a two-year-old boy was found emaciated and riddled with worms after his family left him for dead in a village in southern Nigeria. The boy, now called Hope, was abandoned by his family because they thought he was a witch and was found in the streets by a Danish woman who took him to hospital and thereafter adopted him. Fathers must shoulder a lot of the blame for providing the fertile grounds for the ill-treatment of their children by their stepmothers. There is therefore the need for husbands to put their houses in order, closely monitor their children’s well being and moderate the excesses of jealous wives. In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act to domesticate the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although this law was passed at the Federal level, individual states must domesticate it and to date, only 16 states have done so out of 36. No serious country can afford to toy with the future of its children; hence the need for enforcement of enabling laws that will address the plight of children from broken homes, communal excesses, drug abuse and human trafficking. Stepmothers found to have violated the rights of their stepchildren should be made to face the wrath of the law as a deterrent to others.