When fathers kill own children
Afew days to Christmas, Mr Chinasa Ogbaga, a vulcanizer allegedly killed two of his children in Okpuitumo community in the Abakaliki local government area of Ebonyi.
He was reported to have taken the children to a bush where he allegedly slaughtered them. The third child, two years old, survived with injuries.
The deceased children, according to the police, were a boy and a girl aged six and four, respectively.
Mrs. Loveth Odah, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in Ebonyi State said the suspect went to his estranged wife’s home where he took the children on the pretense of taking them home for the Christmas celebration.
Instead, he went to a bush where he slaughtered them. The incident was the ninth reported case of fathers killing their children, in 2019.
In several places in Nigeria, it is considered a misfortune for children to die before their parents. Most parents pray for their offspring to live longer. Despite the societal belief, there have been cases of fathers killing their children in Nigeria.
Ifeanyi Osakunih, a father living in Abuja said the feeling of becoming a father can never be expressed in words and wondered what could have made fathers kill their children.
“There are thousands of things that come to play during the period you become conscious you are expecting a permanent guest in your life,” he said.
Mr Osakunih described the moment he held his daughter as, “the most exciting moment of my life, filled with so many emotions for both mother and baby going through this stress. My daughter looked so much like me; I had her with so much love, joy and thanks to the Almighty God.”
“Her name is Light Osakunih and till this moment she is still a bundle of joy to my family. She lightens my world. Why would any parent kill a child they brought to this world?” he queried.
Gruesome deaths for ‘no’ reasons
In Niger State, a man, Samaila Shuaibu, allegedly tortured his six-year-old son to death. Adamu Usman, the Commissioner of Police in Niger, the incident happened at Unguwar Tunga Maje in Suleja Local Government Area of Niger.
The son was beaten during an extramural class taken by the father.
The commissioner of police said that the suspect admitted he tortured his son but that he never knew it would lead to his death.
Another father in Bayelsa state poisoned his three children. The suspect was reported to have tied the children to a tree and poisoned them over witchcraft suspicion. While two of them, Miracle, 12 and Godstime, 10, died, the third one, 14-year-old Success, survived.
The father had believed that the mother, who had divorced him, bewitched the children.
The survivor, Success said, “My father came to take us from our grandmother and told us that we were going to a church in Yenagoa, but when we got to the road, he and his brother took us to the bush and tied me and my younger brothers to trees and gave us ‘Sniper’ pesticide to drink.”
“I managed to come to the road after I used my legs to untie the rope and people saw me and took me to the hospital,” he added.
The father, however, told journalists that he had taken the children to church for deliverance and that he had also told his younger brother to return the children back to their mother after the church visit.
In Kano, a 40-year-old father allegedly killed his three-year-old son because he was born out of wedlock.
The man, identified by Musbahu, told police after he was arrested that he killed the boy to save the family from embarrassment as the child was born out of wedlock and there was nobody to care for him.
While most of the culprits were arrested, a 42-year-old father, Enifeh Omomo committed suicide after killing his wife and six-year-old son in Ikorodu, Lagos.
Police spokesperson in the state, Bala Elkana, said “On May 24, at 8.00 a.m. Ikorodu Police Station received a distress call that one Enifeh Akupa Omomo; 42, of No. 12, Eruga St., Aga-Ikorodu, allegedly killed his wife, Mrs Faith Omomo; 38 and his six-year-old son, Glorious Omomo, and thereafter committed suicide in his
The man, identified by Musbahu, told police after he was arrested that he killed the boy to save the family from embarrassment as the child was born out of wedlock and there was nobody to care for him.
one-room apartment.
The police said the corpse of the suspect was found hanging on a rope, tied to the ceiling fan, while corpses of his wife and son were found on the floor.
35-year-old Uwaila Idehen also killed his wife and children in Ovbioge community in Ovia North local government of Edo state.
The police in the state said the suspect said he did not know what came over him when he carried out the act.
He said: “I am a tipper driver. We are two children in my family, my elder sister and me. I am 35 years old. My wife had three children for me, a girl and two boys. The girl is six years, and the boys were three and two years old respectively.
“I don’t know what came over me, and I was not drunk. Due to the nature of my job, my wife always accused me of having affairs with other women, but it is not true.
“I always walk away whenever she got me provoked but that Sunday, I don’t know what came over me. Instead of just leaving the house, I picked up my gun and shot through the door and the bullet pierced through the plywood door and hit my wife and the two boys. The girl escaped,” he said while being paraded by the police.
Also in Akwa Ibom state, Idorenyin Essien allegedly doused his son with kerosene and burnt him to death. The son was burnt over an allegation of theft. It was reported that the boy was alleged to have stolen N500 from a neighbour to buy food.
The incident happened at Afia Nsit community in the Eket Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom. The spokesman of the state police command, DSP. Mac-Don Achibe said the man’s neighbour reported the incident which occurred on August 30.
According to people who witnessed what happened, Essien sent the boy to buy kerosene, which he did. It was learnt that the father tied the boy with a rope, doused him with the kerosene he sent him to buy and set him ablaze.
Also a mother, Mrs. Rukayat Abdulrahmon, allegedly confessed to killing her three-year-old boy as a punitive measure to her husband, Raheem, who had sought for a divorce o in Osogbo,
Osun State.
The husband was said to have approached a Sharia Court in the state which gave the embattled couple three months to go their separate ways if they could not resolve their differences.
But five days to the expiration of the 90 days given by the court, middle-aged Rukayat was said to have killed her son by throwing him inside a well to punish her husband.
The incident happened at the Olorunosebi community at Kola Balogun area of Osogbo, in Osun State on Sunday, November 17.
Why the killings happenpsychologist
A psychologist, Dr Yemi Atibioke said the killing of another creation is seen as one of the worst offenses anyone could commit. He said worse of all was the incidence of fathers killing their own children known as filicide, adding that it has unfortunately been on the rise in Nigeria.
He listed factors that could be responsible for fathers killing their own children to include abusive fathers, mental health problems, spiritual inclinations or beliefs, divorce among parents, infidelity among couples and drug abuse.
He said: “Fathers who are abusive: Most times, society doesn’t pay attention to the ways some parents treat their children. Any abusive father or mother has the tendency of deliberately killing their children.
“There could be a psychospiritual approach to filicide especially in a country like Nigeria where people have strong spiritual inclinations. Most times, there could be prophetic revelations that tag the children as responsible for the misfortunes of their parents which could aggravate negative emotions in such parents and the father or mother may want to address this by killing the child.”
He said children raised by fathers who take hard drugs are at the risk of being murdered, “Drugs distort the thinking pattern of anyone and people who live with them will suffer the consequences of the effect of distortion in thinking resulting from drug abuse,” he said.
“A psychotic father may become paranoid to the point of seeing the children as elements that want to betray or persecute them. In an attempt to deal with the children, they may kill them. Some suffer from auditory hallucinations thereby hearing voices that instruct them to kill their children before the children kill them,” he said adding that filicide is also common among parents who are separated as one parent may kill the children to cause pains to the spouse.
“Infidelity could result in filicide. When a man discovers that the children he has laboured for are not his biological children, such betrayal could result in the father killing such children,” Atibioke said.
Asked ways to prevent or manage the rising cases of filicide in the country, Atibioke who is also the Vice President of the Nigerian Psychological Association, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Chapter, said anyone going through psychological challenges should seek assistance from professionals.
“This is one of the major challenges we have in the country. Many people don’t seek professional help when it is even
obvious they needed one. Those with complicated psychotic symptoms should urgently consult a psychiatrist,” he said.
He urged couples to learn to create a cordial relationship and enabling environment for their children to survive, “The more there is family breakdown, filicide will continue. If parents can manage their relationship well, filicide will be very low in occurrence.” Govt should do more in protecting children - activists
The Executive Director YIAGA Africa Mr. Samson Itodo, a lawyer, said the society needed to do more in protecting the children.
“We are not doing enough. We have become a society that institutionalizes the exploitation of children because of their innocence. We treat children like commodities in the market that we buy and dispense with. That is why we have some states reluctant to domesticate the child rights act. The state needs to rise in defense of children by prosecuting parents who kill their children. It’s a crime and it should be treated as such,” Itodo said.
Also, Dr. Benson Olugbuo, the Executive Director, CLEEN Foundation, said the Nigeria Police Force and other law enforcement agencies have the responsibility to maintain law and other including the protection of children from violent and abusive parents.
According to him, there was a need to upgrade and support the Gender Desk of the Police in all the states to receive additional reports on the abuse of children by parents.
“The proposed Children and Gender Desk of the Nigeria Police Force will be a vital tool to end the killing of children if implemented very well. Retraining of Police officers and reorientation of citizens to acknowledge that the killing of children is unacceptable will be positive interventions,” Olugbuo said.
An Abuja based Public Interest Lawyer and Convener, Coalition of Public Interests Lawyers and Advocates (COPA), Mr. Pelumi Olajengbesi, said deaths resulting from paternal violence are sad and regrettable.
Olajengbesi said, “Besides the possibility of death, violence has severe repercussions on a surviving child’s physical and mental wellbeing. Mothers have had to take on the added responsibility of protecting their children from abusive fathers who may have triggers for their actions such as alcohol or are simply violent and intolerant. But such protection, though necessary, is inadequate as even women are victims of an overbearing partner.
“Killing a person is a crime, and thus a concern of the state. The onus is thus on the state to do more to prevent this crime. The state can do this by taking Child Social Services more seriously. A dedicated agency enabled by law must be set-up to cater to the concerns of children in biological or care-taker homes.
“The Nigerian approach has been to allow a mushroom of NGO’s take on the enormity of concerns such as abusive husbands, this is simply inadequate. The state must mobilize massive resources to monitor and check the growth of kids. This way, abusive fathers can be easily reported and perhaps profiled in a way that cost them in their socio-economic endeavours to deter them from further abusing their children. We also must seriously consider setting up a special call line to more easily track cases of abuse in the country.”
A psychotic father may become paranoid to the point of seeing the children as elements that want to betray or persecute them. In an attempt to deal with the children, they may kill them. Some suffer from auditory hallucinations thereby hearing voices that instruct them to kill their children before the children kill them