How someone could
sell his own daughter to slavery in the 21st century! This is the story of one Edet
Okon, who allegedly fled his ancestral home in Efut Obot Ikot in the ceded
Bakassi Peninsula in March 2013 when Cameroonian Gendarme attacked the village
with his family to a dusty village in Akwa Ikot Eyo Edem, Cross Rivers State.
His daughter now collateral:
The fisherman
lost his first daughter, Blessing, to the cold hands of death in September
2013, after battling with blood cancer for five months.
But Okon’s agony
did not end with Blessing’s death. Indeed, he now lives in the pool of the
anguish of a man who has to practically sell his child into slavery. To raise
funds for the series of medical tests, drugs, feeding and hospital bills
incurred by Blessing, he opted to secure loans from someone to save her dying
daughter.
With no property
to guarantee the loan, Okon gave up his second daughter, Mary, as collateral to
secure the sum of N600, 000 given to him in instalments.
“I was desperate
to save Blessing from dying. Her situation had become critical at that time.
That was the only thing I could do to salvage the situation. I am heartbroken,”
Okon said, as his voice faded off, breaking down in tears.
As tears rolled
down his cheeks, he recalled the day he ‘sold’ her daughter into servitude.
“I don’t know
what came over me. It was sheer desperation I gave out my daughter so that the
man would accept to give us the money,” Okon added, fighting back regrets of
what many are likely to regard as condemnable.
Daniel Ufot Connection:
Daniel Ufot. He helped Okon to negotiate the
N600, 000 loans from the creditor. On getting to the residence of the 59-year-old
Ufot, who lives some five kilometres away from the camp, our correspondent
found Mary in his residence.
Ufot explained
that some plain-cloth security operatives keeping watch on the camp had asked
him to bring Mary from Calabar to meet with his father who he had not seen in
19 months.
“I do not know
Okon from Adam. But since I’m an expert in money lending, I offered to help him
after having learnt of his predicament on how he had been battling to save the
life of his daughter.
“But
unfortunately, he could not provide any form of collateral to secure the loan.
But the creditor, in his magnanimity, agreed to have her daughter as collateral
since she was the only valuable ‘thing’ he could offer,” Ufot said.
Mary, who was a junior secondary school 2
pupil before they left Bakassi in March, 2013, has since dropped out of school
following their displacement from the oil rich peninsular. She shared horrible
tales of inhuman treatment in the hands of her father’s creditor.
Every morning,
Mary hawks bottle water on the streets of Calabar, where, incidentally, Mary
Slessor stopped the killing of twins. Observers may also spot the irony in the
name of the legendary missionary and the enslaved Mary Okon. She added that on
any day she failed to exhaust the sales of her wares, her new guardians
descended heavily on her, beating her mercilessly in the process.
“The man my
father is owing has three female children and some other relatives are also
putting up with us in the house. They normally give me a revenue target of N1,
000 daily.
“And sometimes
when the market is bad and I don’t finish selling the water, they beat me up.
They treat me very badly. I eat only once in a day and that is in the morning.
“I wash all their
clothes, including the ladies’ pants, and do other house chores, too. And if I
hesitate on washing their pants, they get infuriated and throw objects at me at
will. I will not feel happy if I go back there,” she narrated.
Yet, Ufot
insisted that he only brought Mary to meet with his father as a respite since
he had not set his eyes on her for about 19 months.
“There are no
signs that they would be repaying the loan. I only obeyed the instruction of
the security men. She will be on her way back to the creditor’s place in
Calabar,” Ufot said.
When contacted,
the Refugee Camp Leader, Etim Ene, confirmed to our correspondent on the
telephone on Monday that Mary has indeed returned to the creditor in Calabar.
Ene said, “Mary
has been taken to the creditor’s house in Calabar South. He was taken away by
the guarantor, on December 2.”
Efforts to trace the address of the creditor, whose
name is given as Asuquo Etim, said to be residing on Atimbo Road, Calabar South
Local Government Area, was abortive. The creditor is said to be an employee of
the Cross River State Urban Development Agency.
