This is for identity reason, as I have been warned not to disclose this. I also know that NAPTIP or how do they call them, will come after me.
I need to avoid this. I’m not educated, but I have to trust someone to write this piece for me for your newspaper. At least I can read, so I can monitor all the comments that will pour in as a result of my distasteful act.
I’m ready to receive any kind of insult, and possibly commit suicide if…
This is not fictitious. I confess with tears streaming from my eyes. Do not pity me. I don’t pity myself. I consider myself a greedy fool who doesn’t even deserve to live for just another day.
Permit me to tell you how it all started. I had a child out of wedlock. I couldn’t have taken the child to any particular man because none was going to accept him either.
This is because of the kind of life I have lived as a young girl of 24. Quite frankly, I was a prostitute. I can’t tell who the father of my baby is, even as I make this confession. I decided to keep the child just to avoid all the embarrassment associated with this.
I live in the East. It is difficult to survive down here, considering that I also had a baby to care for. My baby was just 9 months when it all happened. I was fed up with life, and I told one of my friends that I was ready to sell my baby to survive so long as I know he would be safe.
She passively laughed at my ignoble assertion. However, two weeks after we discussed, some people called me from the North, that they would like to meet me. I thought they were my usual customers, until I saw two men in my small apartment three days later. They said they were informed that I was willing to sell my child. I asked how they got to know, and they showed me their identity cards. They were police officers and had been asked to do the transaction with me on behalf of a man whose identity they kept secret.
At first, I was scared. And I told them angrily that I was not that kind of person. They were so persistent that they even showed me the cheque signed by one of the officers. I ordered them out of my room and they left that day.
I thought they would be calling me to bother me, but they didn’t. I was full of regrets. I was caught in between constant thought of the money and the adverse effect of losing my child to a total stranger. Different ideas were circling in my head, until I took one last decision.
I picked up my phone after three days of my meeting with the police officers and I asked them to come down as I had accepted to do the transaction. They had warned me that it won’t be very funny if at the end I still go ahead to treat them the way they were treated the last time they came; but I assured them of my total cooperation.
They came again the next day. I was sobbing when they walked in. Yes, I was crying for my child because I knew that after that day, I won’t see him again. They came in a police van, apparently to take my child away with it.
They said the Alhaji who wanted the child was waiting. I asked whether my child was going to be killed. They took pity on me and told me that the man who wanted the child never had a child, and that had occasioned their trip down to the East in search of a child.
They assured me that nothing was going to happen to the child, but that I should take my mind off my baby, as I was never going to see him again. They said that after the payment had been made, the child would cease to be mine.
I wept as I handed over my child to one of them who sat at the back of the van. We drove to one of the banks where the transaction took place. Sincerely, my account was credited and they left. Ten minutes after their departure, I collapsed in the bank premises in tears, leaving many people to wonder what could be wrong with me.
I called them to return my child but they said it was too late.
The painful aspect of my trouble is that I didn’t use the money to do any reasonable thing. As I speak to you, my account has gone down, and I can’t really point to any reasonable thing I have done with the money, apart from the car that I bought few months after the incident.
People around me don’t know what happened to my child as I keep telling them that my baby is with my mum in the village.
I’m making this confession because I doubt if I may survive this CURSE I have brought upon myself. The last cry of my baby re-echoes each time I’m alone. I hear him cry into the silence of the night when I’m alone in my room.
I have not known peace since I sold my child. I have had accident up to ten times since the fateful day. None of the accidents was unconnected to absence minded.
The guilt continues to live in me. Now, I’m contemplating suicide. All I want is your advice as I find very useful comments on this site each time I log in with my phone.
I hardly make comments but I read your confession segment a lot. I always console myself with people who have big problems like me. Please tell me what to do.
I want to get my child back, but I don’t even have a clue on what to do. I don’t even know exactly where my child is now. I think I have been so foolish. Don’t feel any remorse for me. Give me the best advice – exactly what you would tell your sister if she found herself in my shoes.
