Orphans battle for survival amid family rejection, abuse

Becoming an orphan at an early age is an experience that scars many people and makes them vulnerable to child traffickers, abusers, and hostile relatives. With the biting economic hardship, many orphans are subjected to harrowing experiences, deprived of education and financial support, VICTOR AYENI writes

Each time Somto Nze reflected on his life in the past 15 years, it felt like delving into a deep tunnel within himself from which misery rises to the surface.

The 30-year-old is an orphan who has been through the grieving cycle of losing both parents and being forced to grow up quickly at ages when many of his peers were ensconced in parental comfort.

“My life and experience as an orphan have been a struggle to live, feed, and exist,” Nze told Sunday PUNCH.
With a sad countenance, the Lagos-based chef sat forward on a couch and heaved a sigh as he recounted how his parents met.

“My dad hailed from Amachara community in the Isuikwuato Local Government Area of Abia State, while my mother hailed from Enugu State. They both met and fell in love but the two families never approved of their marriage due to a long-standing intra-ethnic dispute. Despite this, my mother loved my father and stood with him through thick and thin.

“My parents came under intense spiritual attacks and the hatred for my mother from my father’s side of the family wasn’t hidden. In fact, this hate intensified because my father was doing better than his siblings.
“My mother told me that she struggled for years to conceive my elder brother and I, and she narrated the spiritual battles she fought in the labour room as well. The hate that my father’s family had for my mother soon transferred to us as well,” Nze shook his head in sadness.

When he was about to complete his secondary school education, his father began building a bungalow with five rooms and a parlour in the village.

When the house was completed and furnished, Nze’s father decided to spend his Christmas holiday there and hold a housewarming party in January of the coming year.

“My mother told him that she had a negative premonition about him going there and asked him to change his plans, but my dad disagreed. When he arrived at his house and was about to climb the stairs, according to him, he felt a strong wind blow him to the ground. He said he tried standing up, but the strange wind blew him back to the ground again and he started screaming and some boys nearby came out to help him.

“He was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a stroke. My mother prayed and did all she could. My father was in that condition for three years and one day, he died on the way to the hospital. I had just finished secondary school at the time,” Nze recalled.

With his father’s death, Nze’s chances of going to university became a burdensome responsibility that his widowed mother could not bear.

The widow had a restaurant in the Mushin Olosha axis of Lagos State, and while Nze’s classmates were getting admitted to the university, he helped out his mother in her eatery.
“I had no inheritance from my father because his business was handed over to my elder brother to manage. My uncles had taken over my father’s house in the village and shared the rooms among themselves.

“Though it wasn’t easy, eventually, I was able to raise some money to attend a federal polytechnic in the South-East. I was cooking part-time and schooling and students patronised me.

“On weekends, I would go for ushering and catering jobs to lessen the financial burden on my mother.  It was a painful journey, and life was hard,” Nze added.

A painful hole in time’s fabric

Recounting what happened shortly before his graduation, Nze told Sunday PUNCH that his mother had disclosed her plan to travel down to her late husband’s house and spiritually cleanse the place.

“I warned her not to go because someone who prayed for her when my father died told her there was a charm waiting for her on the premises of that house. She told me she was following divine direction and she took several pastors with her to pray there.

“My mum was already diabetic but we monitored what she ate and her blood sugar was normal so there was no issue. But after she went to the village, her legs started to swell up and it eventually ruptured and began to decay. In Igboland, we call this eche ra or eyule and it’s said to be a charm used to make a person’s skin deteriorate.
“I was writing my final papers at the time and I wanted them to bring her down to Anambra State for native assistance but she refused. We struggled with huge medical bills; it was when the decay reached her thighs that she agreed to go the traditional way, but it was too late. She died in pain right in my arms. It was the most traumatising thing I could ever think of,” Nze said wiping away his tears.

After Nze lost both of his parents to the cold hands of death, his life never remained the same again.

For weeks, he could not sleep and began to speak unintelligible words. Finally, he was taken to a hospital in Awka, Anambra State, for psychotherapy.

“Being an orphan hasn’t been easy. When my mum was in the hospital, I had to work overtime, and take loans even from people I didn’t normally talk to. When her funeral approached, it was another level of financial struggle, but helpers came for me.

“My maternal family also did all they could to support me morally, financially, mentally and spiritually. I am just grateful that I have culinary skills and I also sell raw foodstuffs. That is how I have been able to survive so far. I have severed my ties with my paternal family,” Nze added.

Orphaned by illnesses, insecurity

Across Nigeria, many children and young adults have become orphaned by a wide range of challenges which range from health issues to insecurity.
The United Nations Children’s Fund, categorised orphans into “maternal orphans” – a category which encapsulates children who lost only their mothers.

It also classifies certain orphans as “paternal orphans,” which refers to children who lost only their fathers. Then global agency also identified those that are “double orphans,” which refers to children who lost both parents.

An estimate by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development showed that there are 17.5 million orphans and vulnerable children across the country.

The population of orphans in Nigeria has been compounded by declining life expectancy, insurgency attacks, maternal mortality, and lack of access to medical care.

Children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Nigeria were reported at 1.2 million in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognised sources.

Between March 2020 and May 2022, about 371,100 children in Nigeria were orphaned as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report by the World Bank.

In the September 2022 edition of the report titled “Children: The Hidden Pandemic,” it was noted that Nigeria is among the countries in the world where children suffer significant losses of their caregivers.
The report further noted that an estimated 430,000 children lost a primary and secondary caregiver due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

‘Life dealt with me harshly’

In Offa town, Kwara State, Sunmisola Akinpelu recently celebrated his graduation from the polytechnic with a stream of photo uploads on his social media accounts.

Dressed in traditional attire, complete with a matching native cap and red beads around his neck, he posed for photos alongside his department mates.

But behind the fleeting smiles of that occasion lies a cloud of heaviness over his heart. “I wish my parents were here to witness this occasion and celebrate with me,” Akinpelu told Sunday PUNCH as he fought back tears.

The 31-year-old, who was raised by his grandparents in Ibadan, Oyo State, was told that his father, who was a chief, had impregnated his mother, Fatima Adedeji, when she was 16 and rejected the pregnancy.

Akinpelu said, “My grandparents had to arrest my father before he accepted the pregnancy. After my mother gave birth to me, I was told my father pleaded with my grandparents to resolve the issue peacefully but did not take responsibility for me till his death in 1993.
“My mother too died due to complications while giving birth to my baby sister, so I grew up not having any thriving memory of my parents. There is a kind of gap that being an orphan leaves inside your heart that just never heals no matter how much you try. My father’s side has never helped me or acknowledged me as a part of the family.

“My grandmother has visited them on several occasions but they have refused to help me. My grandparents have been the ones sponsoring my education from crèche. I had to take up different jobs to fend for myself and pay for my education up to OND level.”

In 2021, Akinpelu resolved to return to school to proceed with his HND, but this became a herculean task due to a lack of finances and support.
“I worked all kinds of jobs. I sold items in the streets, took up factory work, squatted with a friend and asked two friends to teach me English and Mathematics so I could write UTME. I suffered on most days. Even when the admission came, I had to beg friends, family and even strangers just to pay my fees. Life has dealt harshly with me.

“But through it all, I have learned to be tough and be resilient in whatever I face. As for my father’s family, they have refused to acknowledge my existence or give me any inheritance, but I trust in Allah. I still miss my parents badly and I remember them every single day,” he stated with a sad tone.

Mistreated and traumatised

As a child, Nifemi Ajayi did not know his father as he had died when he was only three months old. He became a double orphan when his mother died at the tender age of seven years.
Narrating his ordeal to Sunday PUNCH, the 27-year-old said, “I have since the age of seven been living from one family to another. Me going to school was something that just happened by God’s grace.

“I really suffered. At a point, my elder brother almost used me to do rituals, for you to know the extent of the suffering we were going through. I struggled to finish secondary school and after that, I started doing some menial jobs to sponsor myself to the university.

“I was badly mistreated in the homes I lived in. I was made to eat foods that had spoilt for days. They will ask me to go warm them and eat them. I don’t like remembering everything that happened to me, but God has been faithful.”

According to a report by the National Population Commission, 95 per cent of orphans and vulnerable children lack access to medical, emotional, social, material, or school-related assistance.

As most parents are caregivers and providers in many homes when they become ill or die, the household labour supply is diminished, which consequently affects income and the ability to cultivate the land.

Furthermore, the death of one or both parents results in malnutrition, abandonment, lack of education and social welfare, and exposure of the orphan to all forms of abuse.

‘I became a street boy’
“My story is a long and sad one,” a 32-year-old factory worker who preferred to be known as Saheed, told our correspondent.

“My father was from Oyo State, and my mother was from Benin Republic. I became an orphan in 2008. The following year, one of my aunts was brought from Ibadan to Lagos. She lived in Magodo.

“After some time, I was accused of a crime and thrown out of the house and that was how I became a street boy in Obalende. It was while living in the streets that I was exposed to the wild side of life. It was there I saw that many young boys out there in the street are molested by those touts, even some garage men.”

Trafficked, forced into sex slavery

Similar to Saheed’s experience, a 17-year-old orphan, simply known as Enobong, in an interview with Sunday PUNCH in 2022, narrated how she was trafficked by a man named Okon.

She said, “The incident happened in 2019; I was 14 years old at the time. I met the man on Facebook and we started discussing.  I was in a boarding school then. I met Okon on Facebook and we started talking.

“After I told him about myself, he told me that he was my biological father and that he had my siblings with him. I have never met my biological dad; it was just my mum that I knew but she died when I was only five. That was the reason I was put in an orphanage.
“Along the line, Okon told me to come and meet him but I said there was no way I could come out of the orphanage. But he insisted that I should come to meet him. So, I sneaked out and went to meet him.”

After reports reached the ears of Enobong’s school principal, he invited the coordinator of the orphanage and she called Okon to inform him of what had happened.

“He asked me to pack my things and that he would come pick me up from the place. He promised to take care of me and sponsor my education. I did as he instructed me. I packed my bags and patiently waited for him to come pick me. He came with a car to pick me up. That was how I started living with him.

“He took me to the Ibeno Local Government Area where he hails from. He was always telling me he was my father, but then he started sleeping with me. Sometimes he would send me out to sleep with other men and they would pay him. He made money off me.

“He also threatened me that if I opened up to anyone, he would strangle me to death. He started beating me with wire and using a plastic chair to hit me. He locked me inside one room without food and water but I found a way to escape and reported to the Child’s Rights and Rehabilitation Centre. They stepped in and reported him to the police, leading to his arrest,” Enobong added.

‘Orphanages should be duly registered’

Although orphanages are residential institutions devoted to the care of orphans and vulnerable children, some of these group homes are not officially registered and well-funded to cater for orphans.
In October 2023, the Editor-in-Chief of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, Fisayo Soyombo, exposed the Arrow of God orphanage, located in Nkwelle-Ezunaka, in Awka, Anambra State for illegal adoption and sale of babies.

Reacting to this, a mental health expert, Kelechi Okwaraji, decried the psychological effects such child trafficking could have on children when they grow into adults.

“Being an orphan in itself is bad enough, but being kidnapped or trafficked as a child is a terrible crime and those found guilty should be punished. It’s sad but true that orphans are sometimes re-traumatised at such group homes.

“This is why orphanages should be registered with the right agencies and monitored by social workers. Such crimes against vulnerable children may lead to depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder later in life,” he noted.

On his part, the National President of the Association of Orphanages and Homes Operators in Nigeria, Rev Gabriel Oyedeji, at a meeting held with founders and operators of Homes and Orphanages in Lagos State, promised to work together with the state government to ensure that laid down rules and regulations were adhered to.

The Director of the Legal Department in the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development, Mrs Yemisi Ogunlola, emphasised the need for operators of orphanages and homes to comply with the Child’s Rights Law which is based on the International Treaty which the state government is a signatory to.

“It’s the responsibility of the Ministry of Youth and Social Development to implement and enforce the Child’s Rights Law. The Law is incidental to operating a home in Lagos. Sections 176-183 deal with homes.
“Homes must be registered with the state government. The law places a huge responsibility on the homes just as the state has its responsibility. However, the homes should put themselves under the regulation of the ministry,” Ogunlola added.

However, the head of an orphanage in Abuja, Honour Ground Home, Mrs Blessing Ijenwa, pointed out that some Nigerians also need to change their orientation regarding orphans as they donate expired food items and other products to the orphanage.

She said that the orphanage did not expect that people could donate expired goods to orphaned kids as they only found out most times during preparation or after consumption of the food.

“These children cry and feel sad when they receive expired or bad food items from well-meaning Nigerians, it’s heartbreaking,” she said.

Death of parents leads to distress – Psychologist

In an interview with Sunday PUNCH, a psychologist, Olubunmi Onipede, explained that the trauma of losing both parents can have adverse effects on children and young adults.

Onipede explained, “Having both parents fosters a sense of stability and security. Children and young adults who become orphans can struggle with feelings of mistrust, inferiority, shame, guilt, insecurity and improper conduct.
“The death of parents, especially both gives rise to emotional distress. The orphans are susceptible to long-term psychological problems including self-isolation, withdrawal, depression, anger, anxiety and feelings of sadness.

“Adolescents and children who grow up as orphans may experience functional disorders, trauma, low self-esteem, probability of suicide and other behavioural problems. Social stigmatisation and isolation can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and despair.”

The psychologist further explained that children thrive in environments where they feel safe and loved and urged caregivers to show love to orphans around them and in their care and provide them with holistic support.

“Losing both of your parents, no matter what age you are can be painful and scary. It can expose you to the wrong hands and make you very vulnerable and lonely.

“They must be reassured by the people around them that they are not to blame and as an orphan talking to someone about their feelings can really help,” Onipede added.