Hours after a 22-month-old girl, Mayowa Aweda, was allegedly abducted by a 14-year-old housemaid at Unity Estate, Idimu, Lagos, men of the Lagos State Police Command have found the two of them under the Oshodi bridge around 2am.
The housemaid, Christianah, a young girl from Iseyin, Oyo State, who was taken in by the Aweda family and put in school, told the police that she was told by one Matthew to bring the little girl.
According to her, the yet-to-be-identified Matthew also took both of them on a motorcycle to Oshodi and instructed them to sleep under the bridge till the following morning. “He told me that we would be moving early the following morning,” the girl told the police.
PUNCH had reported how Christianah left the Aweda’s home with the little girl around 7pm that day and simply disappeared, prompting the family to launch a search for the duo.
The girl’s father, Mr. Leo Aweda, told our correspondent that when policemen from the Bolade-Oshodi division saw the two girls under the bridge, Christianah told them that both of them were from the same parents and that they had nowhere to go.
“She told them she did not understand Yoruba whereas she is from Iseyin. The police thought they were taking care of abandoned children,” he said.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that Christianah might have had a change of mind while in police custody and admitted that they were from Unity Estate, Egbeda, but when the police took her to locate where she came from, she took the police to two different schools, who denied knowing her.
Aweda said, “She deliberately avoided the school where we put her, which my daughter also attended. It was while the policewoman was following her around for about three hours that some neighbours spotted them.
“When we were notified, we followed them back to the station and that was where she told us that one Matthew took them on a motorcycle from Egbeda to Oshodi.
“Some people told us that she might have been hypnotised by people who wanted to abduct our child. When she left home with my daughter, she did not pick any of the things we bought for her except a rechargeable lamp. While we were searching for her, someone spotted her around 9pm somewhere with our girl. The person said she had N500 with her out of which she bought a sausage roll for my daughter.”
Aweda said his family took Christianah in after they needed a housemaid and an acquaintance told them of a girl from a poor family that needed help.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the family had asked the police to release Christianah to her family.
“We decided to put her in the same school as my child and even sent N5,000 every month to her mother. After we released her to her family, the mother has apologised to us and that the girl had admitted everything. She said it was the devil that used her,” Aweda said.
He was full of thanks to the police and residents of his neighbourhood who helped in the search for the girl.
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