By Haulat Afolabi
What could have made a mother and housewife so insensitive to the extent of organising for an errant housemaid the age of one of her own children to be thoroughly beaten with a horsewhip and her body left with multiple
lacerations?
This is the question the operatives at the Alakuko Police Station are still looking for an answer to, with the arrest of a housewife, simply identified as Mrs. Olamiposi.
Olamiposi was arrested by the police for allegedly hiring two men suspected to be thugs, to beat up her housemaid, Mariam, because she misplaced her family’s rechargeable lamp!
The incident occurred at Oniyaomebi Street around Mosalasi, Alagbado area of Lagos State.
Our correspondent gathered that the woman, before her arrest, had formed the habit of ill-treating the poor young girl, who had been working with her over some years.
Narrating her ordeal in the hands of her principal, Mariam alleged that her boss had also formed the habit of starving her of food even when she had not done any wrong to warrant such a punishment.
“She doesn’t give me food all the time. Sometimes she gives me breakfast around 2pm in the afternoon. She gives me food twice in a day and sometimes I only eat once a day,” She said.
An eyewitness, Toyin Ndidi, said the little girl was brought from Cotonou in the Republic of Benin and had been serving Mrs. Olamiposi as a housemaid for some years now.
Ndidi, who is a lawyer, told our correspondent, “She is always maltreating her and what made me to get involved was the latest one she did.
“The woman arranged with two men to beat her young housemaid with ‘koboko’ (horse whip) because she misplaced a rechargeable lamp. So, they used the koboko to lacerate her entire body and the little girl ran away from home. The girl is afraid to even go back home. She said she wants to return to her
parents.
“We reported the case to the Alakuko Police Station and the woman was arrested and is currently being detained for interrogation and further investigation.”
