Nine-year-old Abdullahi Taoreed has never known any other
mother except Ronke Olayinka. He was just a year old when his biological mother
abandoned him and ran away, Telegraph reports.
Since her exit from Abdullahi’s life, the woman had never
once bothered to check on her little son.
The boy’s father, unsure of what to do with a crawling
child, decided to hand him over to his elder sister, Ronke Olayinka. Abdullahi’s
mother and father would later die in different years, places and circumstances,
leaving the child an orphan.
Thus Abdullahi grew up to know only Olayinka as his mother
and addressed as such. The boy however soon realized something was fundamentally
wrong, when Olayinka took to spanking him with wood, while she would use a cane
on his other siblings.
He had got used to being pounced on and beaten within an
inch of life with sticks and wood by his mother, but on June 7, 2015, Olayinka
went too far. On one of such occasions,
she got a new blade and used it to slash Abdullahi’s hands.
Neighbours later told the police that the boy’s screams of
pains almost brought down their building at Pipeline Street in Oke-Odo area of
Lagos State, where the incident occurred. Filled with pains and terrified to
his bone marrows, as the blade sliced through flesh, Abdullahi had repeatedly
tried to snatch his hands away.
But Olayinka held onto the little hands like her life
depended on her brutality. Unfazed by the bloodied hands and pains on the boy’s
face, Olayinka took pepper and poured into the fresh wounds, eliciting more
cries of agony.
When Sunday Telegraph asked to speak with the wounded boy,
neighbors said he had been rushed to a nearby hospital by policemen from
Oke-Odo Police Station.
On Monday, Abdullahi was able to speak with our
correspondent. By December this year, Abdullahi will be 10. The boy looked
unkempt and had a lot of scars on his body. He also has two fresh wounds on his
head. He said the head wounds were inflicted on him by his mother. “My mummy
used wood to hit me on the head,” he said, sighing heavily. “I don’t hawk
anything, but I do the cooking.”
The primary two pupil continued: “Yes, it was my mummy who
inflicted blade cuts on my hands because I went to a party opposite our house
to eat. There was no food at home. I was hungry, so I assisted the people
holding the party to carry chairs. I knew that if I assisted them, they would
give me food. They gave me food. My sister went to report to my mummy. “We went
for evening prayer.
After the prayer, my mummy called me and started cutting my
hands with a blade.
She went out to buy the blade. The cut was deep. She poured
pepper into the wounds. She then gave me a hot pot of beans to carry to the
kitchen with the bloodied hands.
“One of our neighbours, a woman, saw me and took the pot
from me. She went and told everyone in the compound. People saw my hands and
started crying.”
Some of the neighbours, who said they were tired of
Olayinka’s alleged maltreatment of Abdullahi, mobilised and alerted the police.
Recalling his life so far with his adopted mother, Abdullahi said: “It’s not
every time my mummy gives me food. She uses a piece of wood to beat me, but
uses canes on her kids.”
Recollecting how he sustained one of the fresh head
injuries, he said: “My mummy said I should go and buy kerosene. When I got
there, the people said the money was not enough. I went home to tell mummy. She
then used a piece of wood to hit me on my head.”
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