Following an insinuation that the popular lawyer, Mrs. Seyi Ojo was killed through exposure of a popular street beggar Nzube Ekene who pretended to be blind in Ado-Ekiti, LiveTimesNG has gathered that she was a sickle patient.
Remember that the mother of two who used to beg for money at the traffic light around the popular Fajuyi roundabout with a ten year old girl who she trafficked was exposed by the late lawyer who also was the chairperson of the Association of Women Lawyers known as FIDA.
LiveTimesNG’s revealed that she has been battling with sickle ailment for long which is has been managing. Mrs. Ojo was described as an activist from school days and this has fetched her the popularity in Ekiti State to become the special Adviser to the wife of Ekiti State governor, Mrs. Bisi Fayemi.
Mrs. Ojo whose death was announced by a lawyer and chairmanship candidate of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) for the forthcoming NBA election, Barrister Dele Adesina (SAN) on Thursday evening, was interviewed by LiveTimesNG before her demise on Modus Operandi of carrying out in internal trafficking and how the traffickers are using innocent children as beggars or bring blind and children together to beg for alms.
In the interview, Mrs. Ojo revealed how these people are mostly trafficked from Northern Nigeria to South West to make money through them by begging for alms.
Below is excerpts of the interview with her:
This was revealed in a story of a12-year old girl who was guiding a blind, haggard looking woman one morning in Ado-Ekiti. A special Adviser to the wife of Ekiti State governor, Mrs. Oluwaseyi Ojo, was curious on seeing her. She wanted to help enlist her in the state government programme for the girl child, tagged : ‘Keep Girls in School’ which will be launched soon.
She was rather shocked to find out from the girl that the woman she was guiding wasn’t her mother nor any of her relatives.
Actually the woman had fetched her from her parents in Anambra State with a promise to give her education and make her house help.
It was also discovered that the woman wasn’t blind after all. She had faked her blindness in order to get cheap money from unsuspecting members of the public.
Speaking with this reporter, Mrs. Ojo said, “I called on a police officer in my office to go and get her and the mother and on getting to my office, the girl came and hugged me and said she wanted to go home and I asked her “is that not your mum?, the girl answered ‘no, she is not my mum’ that she has not seen her mum in years” the girl replied the female lawyer who was shocked and felt pained.
According to Mrs. Ojo, “I took her aside and interviewed her and I discovered that the woman trafficked her from Anambra State. She had told the girl’s mum that she was going to send her to school, while she helps her trade in the evening, which she never did. Instead, she started using her as a beggar coupled with other abuses. The little girl had not eaten, she is not in school as at 11:30am when I saw her. She had not had her bath, we had to give her food and took care of her here before we handed her to NAPTIP.
According to Mrs. Ojo, this is not the first case she had handled as member of FIDA. She said: “FIDA also arrested one early this year. The woman was brought to my office and I discovered she was into trafficking of another person’s child, using her for begging. They have their children at home, while, they use other people’s children. There are also cases where you find a man or woman involved in trafficking, they get house girls, share them, while they collect their salaries. So many of the house girls, sales girls you are seeing were trafficked. It is also shocking to see those little boys on the streets who hold beggars, the beggars and the little boys were trafficked from the North, so, one will be shocked at how much of child trafficking is going on and some of them end up in Omar and so many other places.
“Sometime last year, members of FIDA were going for a programme and we boarded a bus with a girl. We suspected the girl was trafficked, We picked her and we took her to Osogbo and handed her over to NAPTIP. She was trafficked from Ekiti. We noticed the way she was talking to somebody, that she was going to the airport and we looked at her with question that what this little girl was going to do at the airport? And that was what arose our suspicion. We were going to Lagos and noticed somebody kept calling the girl on phone and we started monitoring her, that was how we discovered. The Modus operandi of the trafficking criminals is to go to one’s parent and tell them that there is a greener pastures for them somewhere, if only they can send their little girl especially to countries like Omar. They would say we have a job for your daughter, she will be sending money home and unknown to the girl and her parents, the girl is going for prostitution.
“That is what they use them for. I have had cases of girls that come back. Three girls walked into my office at different occasions, they said they were trafficked to Omar, it was prostitution they went to do, they managed to survive and they came back, they said they wanted us to arrest those involved but such cases, we normally refer to NAPTIP in Oshogbo since we don’t have NAPTIP in Ekiti, but in Osogbo. NATIP is in charge of investigations”, she revealed.
