New Telegraph

Dad, stepmother starve, lock up two-year-old son

Police have arrested a man, identified as Wisdom, at Okumagba Avenue in Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State for allegedly maltreating his two-year-old son, Zino. Wisdom reportedly locked the child up in a dingy room and starved him for months.

 

The boy’s mother was said to have left him with his father and stepmother, Mrs. Rita Wisdom.

 

However, Zino was rescued when neighbours reported to government and civil society organisations that the boy was about to die of hunger. He was rescued from the darkroom in his father’s residence at No. 113, Okumagba Avenue, Ojabugbe Junction, off Deco Road, Warri, Delta State.

 

The Director-General (DG) of the Young Nigerian Rights Organisation, Comrade Victor Ojei, said the child had been abused for weeks for no fault of his. He said: “This is Zino, a two-yearold child who the biological mother dropped with his biological father and stepmother.

 

He has suffered molestation. “They lock him up in a darkroom and beat him if he collects food from neighbours. Neighbours are afraid the parents may end up killing him. Government should step in.”

 

Ojei, who doubles as the state coordinator of the Delta North Conference for Actualisation of Human Rights, said the child had received all sorts of maltreatment and starvation.

 

He said the government should come to the aid of the boy since the parents had prevented neighbours from feeding the boy and they had refused to give him either. “Please come to the aid of this child. Please help repost till he gets a helper,” he pleaded.

 

It was learnt that Wisdom impregnated another woman when Zino was a year old hence his mother got angry and left the child with his father. However, the father was arrested yesterday as the stepmother reportedly wanted to escape with the child in a tricycle after she got information that detectives were coming to arrest them.

 

The state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Onome Onovwakpoyeya, could not be reached on her mobile phone to get her reaction to the story.

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