While their governor is busy buying ‘pepper’ in the
market, cutting ‘ponmo’ in the parlour and ‘badmouthing’ the federal government,
his teenagers are wasting away and abuse by criminally minded street urchins,
aka ‘area boys’ who have created a colony in Atikankan area of Ado-Ekiti, where
they have been luring teenage girls, just for the purpose of sexual pleasure
after a heavy bout of cannabis sativa smoking and ‘paraga’ local gin.
This type of criminality, where under-aged girls are
recruited to give sexual pleasures to drug addicts is so novel in Ekiti, that
it almost escaped the radar of the law enforcement agencies, but thanks to the
vigilance of the Vigilante Group, what was hidden has been exposed.
Atikankan, a City’s dark spot
Atikankan in Ado-Ekiti, could easily be described as
the most notorious area in the state capital, it housed most of the criminal
dens and hideouts, where drug peddlers trade their wares openly
with reckless abandon, it is also an abode for commercial sex workers, most of
the brothels in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, are situated in that
particular area.
Once, it is dusk, Atikankan comes alive and trading of
all sorts begins. The population of these run-away teenage girls is
swelling by the day, and it is instructive to note that most of these girls are
from broken homes. They have found homes in the abode of drug addicts, who use
them as sex slaves in exchange for drugs and little cash.
Victims of abuse and stories:
Tobi Gbadamosi is just 15-years-old, but the young
girl’s ordeal in her short span of existence far outweighs her age, she has
experienced what many ladies in their twenties, or thirties and forties have
never seen in their lives: she smokes marijuana, engages in wild sex and aborts
pregnancies at will.
In her words, “ I have only aborted once, then I was
fourteen. I had gone to stay with a relative in a neighbouring town when I met
a man who eventually impregnated me but bolted away thereafter. I returned home
to find out that the only option available to save my face was to abort the
baby and my mum helped me after she had found out the truth about it,” Tobi
said.
How the girls were apprehended
A member of the Vigilante group who had led a
vigilante operation to the places where the girls were picked up, Mr. Babatunde
Owoeye told Vanguard that “we picked two of them in Atikankan area and the
others in Okeila. The parents of one of the girls named Tolu have been looking
for her for about two weeks.
‘’When we eventually got a tip-off about her
whereabouts from her friends around their house. We stormed the place in a
notorious dark spot in Ado-Ekiti, popularly known as Atikankan and we were able
to apprehend her. “ She had raised the alarm to alert some tough looking
young men in the place who rushed out carrying cutlasses to attack us. But when
they found out that we out-numbered them, they took to their heels.
“We discovered that the girls are being camped in the
hideouts, made to have marathon sex with the wild young men there who also
smoke marijuana and initiate the girls into occult activities.
“Many of the girls had absconded home three weeks ago.
A parent of one of them had come to report that her daughter had ran away from
home to practice prostitution with street boys, and pleaded that we help look
for her,’’
Confession:
None of the girls who were scantily dressed, denied
any of the allegations levelled against them. In fact, they not only
corroborated the accusations but also added details.
The 16-year old told Vanguard that she had actually
left home for about 9 days before she was caught. Suliya said she had been
asked to hawk her mother’s wares when she absconded and teamed up with two
other friends to visit their boyfriends’ places.
“I had dropped the palm oil my mother asked me to hawk
at my grand mum’s place and followed my friends to visit the boys. I have a
boyfriend among the boys. We had stayed with the boys till around 7pm that day
and I reasoned that it was already too late so we passed the night with the
boys and had sex with them.
“ Since that first day, I was afraid to go back home,
thinking that my mother would beat me, so we began to stay with my friends’ in
their grandmother’s place. We would sleep there and in the morning, eat and go
to the boys’ place and be with them till late in the night and return to the
grand mother’s place.”
Tolulope, while relating her own story said, “We all
have boyfriends among the boys whose cult name is seven stars in
Atikankan. Tolulope , 16, stayed in Ogbando street before she abandoned
home for the street boys’ abode. Her mother had sent her on an errand which she
was supposed to return to in a couple of hours but she never came home until
two days after.
Unhappy at her daughter’s attitude, the angry mother
in a fit of anger, sent her back to where she was coming from. To avoid
her mother’s rage, Tolu said she ran off to her grand mother’s place where she
has since been staying. “I also have a boy friend among the boys from where the
Vigilante group apprehended us. We would leave my grandmother’s place every
morning and resume at the boys place and be there, catching fun till late in
the night when we return to my grand mum’s place.”
What was their reward for the amorous service rendered
to their drug-addict boyfriends? While two of them said they don’t receive a
dime for giving emotional comfort to the boys, Tobi, one of the girls,
confessed that “ My boy friend buy clothes for me and other belongings such as
shoes and bras. He also feed me and sometimes give me about N2500 to take care
of myself.”
Vanguard exclusive.
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