The moment he was told some visitors had come to see him, he raced swiftly to the waiting room, hoping to see the ‘person’ he had been expecting all this while. But when he saw who his guests were,the ray of hope on his face vanished.
Then he sat calmly on a chair, managing to flash a brief forced smile.
Then he sat calmly on a chair, managing to flash a brief forced smile.
Donning a green sleeveless shirt and chequered shorts, it wasn’t long before he expressed what was on his mind.
“I want to go to my mummy’s house,” he said, realising he wasn’t going to be punished, after all. “I don’t like here anymore. I want to go home.”
Gabriel Timilehin repeated those words as if he wasn’t heard.
“I’m tired of here. I want to see my mum,” he said again.
Now about 11 years old, it has dawned on Gabriel (he prefers to be called this name) that the Nigerian Red Cross Society Motherless and Abandoned Babies Home at Yaba, Lagos, is not his real home.
“I also want to see my daddy,” he added. “I’ve not seen them before and I want to see them now.”
When asked the first words he would ever tell his parents if he saw them were, Gabriel didn’t think for a second.
His response: “If I ever see my mum, I’ll tell her, ‘I miss you, mum.’ To my dad, I’ll say to him, ‘I love you, dad.’”
He was asked to clarify why he would say to his mum he missed her and his dad he loved him, but Gabriel couldn’t explain. Perhaps the words have no difference in meaning to him.
“I just don’t want to remain here anymore, I’m tired of here. I want to see how my mum and dad look like,” Gabriel held onto the words as if they were a chorus.
Now in Primary Five, Gabriel isn’t a typical child who would say he would like to become a medical doctor, or lawyer, or professor when asked what he would like to become in the future.
“I would like to become a footballer when I grow up. I like Real Madrid FC. And I like Victor Moses. When I go to the university, I’ll study medicine or law, but I want to become a footballer eventually. I like to travel around the world, playing soccer,” he said.
Gabriel, whose favourite meal is ‘amala’ with ‘ewedu’ soup, is hopeful his dreams — seeing his mum and dad and becoming a footballer — will come true someday.
“I think about my mum (and dad) first thing in the day. I’ll like to say thank you to my mothers taking good care of me here. When I become a football star, I’ll be coming here to give them gifts,” he assured.
A bit relieved, the boy felt hopeful that the interview with our correspondent would bring back his mum.
“I celebrated my last birthday last year, but I hope to celebrate the next one with my mum. Hopefully then, she’s going to cut a cake for me,” he said, waving goodbye.
The administrative officer of the home, Mrs. Gloria Chiekwe, said it was apparent that Gabriel had become tired of the home, stating several efforts they usually make to calm him down each time he brings up the issue of seeing his mother.
She’s not, however, sure of how long it will take to do that.
“He loves to be in charge. If he sees people working, he always wants to lend a helping hand. He’s always there. Ask him to take care of the younger children, he’s always there and wants to show maturity,” she said of Gabriel, adding, “He was 18 months old when he was brought here. He’s a nice boy, but when his peers — children who were admitted to the home at the same time with him — started leaving here, his behaviour started to change. He wants to go too.”
Chiekwe added that Gabriel’s feelings for his parents grew more after an incident in the home.
“One of our members of staff used to play with him very well to the extent that everybody started calling him ‘Gabriel’s daddy,’ and he probably believed he was his daddy,” she said.
But one day, the boy told everyone in the face that the man was not his daddy.
“He’s not taking me home, so he’s not my daddy,” Chiekwe recalled what Gabriel said, adding that the home would like to see his parents or relatives come for him someday soon.
Chiekwe also described Gabriel as a talented and well-behaved boy.
She said, “Our home doesn’t keep children for long. His friends and mates are all gone, either by adoption or reconciliation with their parents. At times he feels bad he’s still here. He’d come up here and tell me, ‘I want to go.’ He’d say he’s fed up. ‘Where do you want to go to?’ I’d ask him, and he’d say, ‘I want to go and see my mum.’ We usually calm him down and tell him things that make him happy.
Boy abandoned“We have a school and he’s the first member of the Nigerian Red Cross unit in the school. He’s a member of the band and attends musical lectures. He’s a calm boy and I’ve never seen him steal. He’s a nice boy. He has seen the picture of his mother and he’s hopeful that one day the woman will come. We also want the woman to show her face for the boy to feel motherly love — to know what love is all about and settle like any other child.
“Children come here and go, whether by adoption or whatever, and they don’t come back. We don’t want his to be an exception. A child of 18 months and now about 11, it’s expected to know how his feelings will be. When a child sees a parent coming for their children they’ll like to see who comes for them also. He’s been seeing other children with their parents and he wants his to also come.
“If Gabriel should have a parent attached to him today, he’ll do even better. I’m sure of that. We’ve made so much effort in partnership with the Lagos State Ministry of Youth, Sports and Social Development to trace the parents, but nothing is coming forth. We’ve done some press briefings about the boy, asking for whoever gave birth to him to show up, but no one has ever shown their face to say they know the boy. At least, we’re sure her mother is aware that her baby was brought to the Red Cross.”
The matron of the home, Mrs. Juliana Obanife, also encouraged Gabriel’s parents, especially his mother, to come for him so he could start a new life.
“He doesn’t want to see anyone again apart from his mother. Once the children reach a certain age, they’re always ready to leave. They know there’s something missing in their lives. At that stage, there’s nothing you say that reaches their hearts. They just want to leave,” she said.
Gabriel’s life didn’t start in an exciting way, but if he finally gets to achieve his dreams, it will end in an exciting way.
He was 18 months old when he was reportedly found abandoned in a street at the Ikotun area of Lagos by a resident in the night of January 8, 2007 — a story published in the May 5, 2007 edition of Saturday PUNCH.
Gabriel was given birth to in 2005 after an artisan, named Samson Lawal, impregnated a then-17-year-old Tope Ojo, who had just completed her secondary school education.
“I was at Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, where I was helping someone to manage a call centre when I met Samson. He told me he loved me and would want us to be going out together,” the mother had said in the report.
Their affair started sometime in mid-2004.
In November 2004, Ojo realised she was pregnant, but after telling her lover, she was asked to abort the baby, which she did not apparently do.
She persuaded her lover to accept the pregnancy, but he refused. He said he didn’t want to die young, according to the report.
Ojo, whose parents were separated, then travelled to Ibadan, Oyo State, to lodge with her mother’s friend, and there she gave birth to Gabriel.
But afterwards, her guardian felt she and her baby had become a burden on her, so she evicted them.
The young mother had no choice but to return to Lagos, where she signed on as a labourer at construction sites.
But the peanuts she got could barely sustain only her, let alone both her and her child, so one day, she reportedly went to locate Lawal’s (her lover) parents’ home at Ikotun and dropped Gabriel with Lawal’s mother, but not without intimating a neighbour of her action.
The following day, she got a call that her baby had been branded ‘abandoned’ and had been taken to the Alakara Police Station at Ikotun by Samson’s father, Isiaka Lawal.
After spending some weeks at the Juvenile Welfare Centre at Alakara, Gabriel was then taken to the NRCS Orphanage Home at Yaba.
However, Ojo alleged then that the police deliberately branded her baby that way so she wouldn’t have access to him again.
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