A 65 year old house painter, Jamiu Jimoh and his traditional birth attendant daughter, Yetunde Osin, have
been arrested by the Lagos state police command for allegedly stealing a
baby.
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Yetunde, who practices local midwifery at her home in the Oyingbo area of
the state, had assisted a 28 year old woman identified as Stella
to give birth on November 9th last year. Yetunde, after the delivery,
told Stella that her baby had died and presented a dead baby corpse to
Stella.
However, she was seen with a baby girl within the same period by witnesses. She
eventually gave the baby to her father at Ikorodu after her neighbors
began to suspect her. Following complains by her neighbors, she
and her father were arrested and accused of running a baby trafficking
syndicate. She however denied the claim, saying she found the new born
baby abandoned at Apapa road, Oyingbo and took a liking to the child and
decided to keep the baby. This is Yetunde’s side of the story:
On November 9, I was walking along the road in Oyingbo and found a baby
on the ground. It was a female child, so I took it. That was the
mistake I made. I should have gone to report to the police, but because
it was a female baby, I liked her. That was how I took the baby home to
Oyingbo. But when I saw how everyone was behaving and gossiping, I had
to take the baby to my father in Ikorodu. Even when I could not come to
Ikorodu from Oyingbo, my father was there to take care of her. Not long
after I left his place on Sunday, someone called me on phone at night,
saying my father had been arrested. I am a hairdresser, but I am also a
traditional birth attendant. The baby was not delivered at my place. I
was not the one that helped the mother of the child deliver the baby.
But when the police heard that I was a traditional birth attendant and
asked me if I assisted the baby’s mother during delivery, I said yes.
But I found the baby under the bridge at Apapa Road in Oyingbo and she
has been with me since November.
Her father, Jimoh, when interrogated, said he had no idea where his daughter found the baby.
“Osin is not the baby’s mother. She was not pregnant. I do not know the
baby’s mother. My daughter has never brought children to me before.”he
said