Mrs Ijeoma Opara, mother of the two toddlers, ages four and two, who were abducted by an apprentice four days after resuming at a hair dressing saloon in Ajegunle area of Lagos, has resorted to fasting and prayer for the return of her children. Vanguard gathered that the suspect identified simply as Rose, took the two children; Chinasa, 4, and Chikamuso, 27 months, out of their mother’s shop, on the pretext that she was going to buy food from a local food vendor around the area.
Efforts by Mrs. Opara to locate her children on arrival from the market failed, as they were nowhere to be found. Ijeoma, mother Ijeoma, mother Also, search conducted on all the buildings located on Turner Street, where Rose purportedly gave as her address, yielded no positive result as nobody appeared to know her. With the assistance of a family friend, Mrs Opara was traced to a church at Ago Hausa, where prayers are reportedly being held since the disappearance of her children. In an interview with Vanguard, the distraught mother narrated how the visit of Rose to the hair dressing saloon where her work has brought pain to the family.
Narrating in tears, she said: “On Tuesday afternoon, a lady in her mid twenties, who introduced herself as Rose, came to the saloon and said she, wanted to be an apprentice. She said she lives in Turner Street. I told her that I wasn’t the owner of the saloon and that the owner had travelled for a burial. I asked her to come back later in the week when the owner would have returned, to discuss the modalities for her apprenticeship. But she insisted on assuming, saying she wanted to start working before the owner returned.
“The next day (Wednesday), she came in the morning and stayed until we closed, she did same the other days too. “I didn’t know she had an ulterior motive until Saturday. At about 11:45am, I went to buy food stuffs from a nearby market and left my children in the shop with Franca, an adolescent who is mentally challenged and the new apprentice, Rose. When I returned, I didn’t see my kids and Rose. When I asked Franca, she said that Rose took them to buy food around Babaani Street immediately I left for the market. “I quickly ran to Babani Street, but there was no sign of them anywhere, I called my husband to notify him, some neighbours, who were around immediately joined in the search. Later we went to report at the Police station but we were told to wait for 24-hours before they would be declared missing, the Orlu, Imo state mother stated in tears.
Attempt to abduct more children A neighbour, who simply gave her name as Ngozi, revealed that for providence Rose would have abducted her daughter and her cousin. Expressing shock over the incident, she said: “It is usually in movies that we see such things happen. But for God’s intervention, Rose would have taken my daughter Muna and her cousin alongside the two siblings that Saturday afternoon. A neighbour, who saw the four kids with the apprentice asked my daughter and her cousin to go back home. We are praying for the kids to be found unharmed.”