- Police arrest sisters-in-law for complicity
- We’re innocent-Husband’s sisters
Monday, March 20, 2017, will remain indelibly imprinted in the mind of Mrs. Toyosi Eyo, a mother of two and a staff of the Lagos State Model College, Igbogbo, Ikorodu, Lagos.
The reason: It was on this fateful day that her two children were allegedly abducted by her sisters in-law in connivance with her husband, Eyo Okon Eyo, who has since vanished with the kids.
Toyosi and her husband, Eyo, an indigene of Cross River State got married on September 19, 2009, at the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Kingdom Assembly, Iselewu, Igbogbo, Ikorodu area of Lagos State.
Blessed later with two lovely children, four-year-old Elijah Eyo and Esther Eyo, one, the couple lived happily together at 3, Alhaji Salaudeen Sanni Cresent, Iselewu, Igbogbo, Ikorodu, until her husband lost his job early last year.
Nigerians and the appropriate authorities, please, help me! My husband is capable of selling my children into slavery for cash. Please, help me before it is too late. He had always transferred his financial frustrations on me. Now, I have not heard from him and I have not seen my children. He can harm them because I don’t trust him!
This unfortunate situation shifted the responsibility of catering for the entire family upon Toyosi, who began to singlehandedly feed and care for the two children and her jobless husband.
Eyo’s husband has two younger sisters, namely Mrs. Nelly Etim Benjamin, and Miss Nsikkak Rose, both of who live in Iselewu, Igbogbo, close to their elder brother. But this closeness of the two sistersin-law to the residence of the Eyos has turned out to be a curse rather than blessing.
Help! My jobless husband wants to sell my two children for cash, woman cries out Toyosi has alleged that Eyo’s two sisters had initially taken control of her husband as they prevailed on him, since he lost his job, to stop worshipping in the church where the couple got wedded.
She alleged that her two sisters-inlaw had since been going with her husband from one church to another.
Eyo, the abductor
Due to the situation in the family, Toyosi was said to have sought and got the approval of her husband to stay in the staff quarters the school, where she is a teacher, allocated to her with her two children between Monday and Thursday before returning to their matrimonial home for the weekend every Friday.
She, however, said that she had to enroll her four-yearold son in a primary school close to her place of work.
This was Toyosi and her two children’s weekly routine until March 17 this year, when strange things began to happen in the Eyo family.
According to her, “On Friday 17th of March, when I got home at night with my children, my husband told me that he had a terrible dream concerning our son.
I immediately went into prayers and told my husband to join me in the prayers so as to forestall any attack, but he didn’t oblige me. I prayed fervently and went to bed with my children later,” she said.
The following day, Toyosi said, her two sisters-in-law visited the Eyos residence and had a private meeting with her husband but she was not privy to the discussions as she was shut out of the meeting.
On March 19, which was a Sunday, Toyosi said after returning home from church, her husband told her that she would not be going back to her place of work with their two children the next day.
This she found strange! ”When my husband told me that I won’t be going back with the children the following day, I was shocked and I asked him, who would be taking care of them while I was gone, he couldn’t give me an answer.
That was when I became suspicious of his motive for saying so. And so I had to call the pastors of my husband’s church to inform them of his decision so that they could intervene because I knew that the lives of my children could be in danger,” she said.
The mother of two said that the pastors came to their house and pleaded with her husband, who, in the presence of the clergymen that night, agreed to revert his decision.
But to her surprise, the next day at about 6.30 am, when she was set to leave the house with her two children as usual for her place of work, Eyo’s two younger sisters arrived in their house and insisted that she won’t go with her son and daughter.
Fazed and not clear about her next step, Toyosi said she quickly called some elderly members of her church, who rushed down to the family’s residence, to appeal to her husband and his sisters.
After a discussion that dragged on for long, Eyo and her sisters agreed with the church elders that they would allow her to take the children along with her.
Thinking that they had successfully settled the matter, the church elders then left the residence of the Eyos. But no sooner had the church elders left than Eyo allegedly brought out a machete, threatening to kill his wife, who attempted to run for her dear life. She ran out of the house to escape from her rampaging husband.
As this drama was going on, Eyo’s two younger sisters allegedly grabbed each of the children and as she tried to raise the alarm to alert their neighbours, the two ladies along with her husband ran into a waiting taxi cab, which immediately drove away at a high speed to an unknown destination.
The mother of two immediately reported the matter to the police at the Igbogbo Division, Barracks, where she was asked to write a statement.
The divisional police officer also asked her to provide the house addresses of her two sisters-in-law. But when the police got to the women’s houses, they had absconded, leaving no traces.
On March 21, 2017, some policemen went with Toyosi to her sisters-in-law houses to invite the women.
The next day, the two women, however, made a surprise appearance at the police station where they were detained. With the arrest of the two women, Toyosi had high hopes that her children would be found and returned to her within a short time.
But surprisingly, when she got to the police station on March 24, the DPO told her that one of her detained sisters-inlaw, Nelly Benjamin had been released on bail to enable her to go and bring back her children where they had kept them.
Two days after, the second woman, too, was released on bail even when the first one had yet to return with Toyosi’s children. Since then, Toyosi, distraught, has been at a loss on the whereabouts of her children.
“Nigerians and the appropriate authorities, please, help me! My husband is capable of selling my children into slavery for cash. Please, help me before it is too late. He had always transferred his financial frustrations on me.
Now, I have not heard from him and I have not seen my children. He can harm them because I don’t trust him!”
Toyosi said. Efforts by our correspondent to contact Toyosi’s husband, Eyo, proved abortive as calls made to his phone did not go through. Several SMS text messages sent to his phone were also not replied.
We also could not get the comments of one of Toyosi’s sisters-inlaw, Nelly, alleged to be involved in the saga. But Nelly’s husband, Mr. Effiong Benjamin, told our correspondent on the phone that his wife was innocent of the alleged abduction of the two children of the Eyos.
“My wife has always had the best interest in her brother and his family. So, why would she go and abduct their children when she knows what they have been going through. She is innocent of all this accusations, but I know the whole truth will soon be exposed”, Benjamin said.
When contacted, Toyosi’s second sister-in-law, Nssikak Rose, declined to make any comment, saying she would prefer to remain silent because it was obvious that everyone was on the side of her brother’s wife. “I won’t say anything on the matter since you people are already believing what Toyosi said,” she insisted.
