Kids made orphans by mother’s death, father’s disappearance

When their parents were together, they never knew what it was to skip a meal. But things started wearing a different look when their father, Mr. Fred Agu, absconded from home in 2011. The children were then too young to be convinced why their dad would abandon them.

Little did they know that their mother, Mrs. Rose Agu, had courted the ‘anger’ of their father when she delivered a set of twin girls (two years earlier), thereby adding two more kids to two boys and two girls, swelling it to a family of eight.

The unwelcome gifts to a man, who had then lost his job with an oil firm saw him take the easiest way: abandoning the children with their mother to an unknown place.

It was at that juncture that these unlucky youngsters started tasting what it is to be catered for by a single parent. At their residence in No. 2, Cooperative Avenue Ijegun, a suburb of Lagos State, their mother, with little or no help from relations and friends, carried on.

Unfortunately, everyone she approached for any succor reeled out his or her own misfortune to a point of even drawing her pity. The best most offered were strands of prayers and Biblical injunctions portraying the future as promising than her present predicament.

But things went awry when on a sad Sunday, May 19, 2013 by 11pm, the oldest child, Ike, then 12 was woken up by a shriek voice of his mom. She tried making a statement to the boy but to no avail. That was the end. Ike was able to arouse neighbours from their sleep, who mobilized to rush her to Igando General Hospital, Alimosho, where doctor there confirmed her dead. That began the real plight of these six children.

After the incident, all efforts at locating the children’s father proved abortive. The deceased elder sister, Mrs. Uzo Jonah, who lost her husband less than a year before, said “till date, nobody had seen him. But those who said they sighted him once after the death of my sister said he looked forlorn.”

Investigation shows that lately, the children have been left at the mercy of various foster parents. On what should be done, she said she had approached some churches and other philanthropic organizations for assistance with little help forthcoming.