22/10/2025
Early this year, January to be precise, my senior daughter left home without my consent. I was almost running mad looking for her. I had to go to the Police station to make a formal report.
You don't want to imagine the sleepless nights I had for 2 days. I prayed, I cried, I thought of kidnappers, bad guys. I knew it could never be because of a boy. The trauma was much in short.
On the 3rd day, I went to the Police station again. Just as they were about to send a signal, two policewomen came to me and asked me to call her father.
I had to explain to them that I had not heard from him in years and his 2 numbers I had with me stopped going through years back so I had not bothered to call for years. Besides, he has my number and can reach me if he wants to. My number has not changed for over 15 years.
For hours, we tried to get across to those people I felt would know his number. Finally, we got a number from one true caller list in 2020 and we called.
He said my daughter is with him. She just arrived at the park in Lagos all the way from Abuja.
I felt relief, pain, betrayal, anger all at the same time.
My daughter was communicating with her father all the while and I didn't know. He risked her life, directed her on how to go to a bus park, traveled with night bus to Lagos as dangerous and risky as our roads are.
Without a phone. She didn't travel with her phone. I have never heard or seen something like that.
When I say some men are wicked and useless, believe me. If anything had happened to her on the road, I'll be the one people would look for to blame.
To cut the long story short, the day he picked her from the park, he dropped her at his relative's house not even at his house.
For 3 months, I did not communicate with her and I believed she was fine not knowing that she was not even with him. As a mother, I felt all was not well with her. We started speaking in April. She was begging to come back home.
I told her, na lie. Things are not done like that. She must experience the reason why I stay on my own. She will have to bear the consequences of her decision.
This is October.
Since that day he dropped her in January , she has not seen him.
I have been the one taking care of her
upkeep from here since April. I would order what she needs from some vendors on Facebook and Instagram and they will deliver to her.
For 10 months, she is yet to see the man that dragged her to Lagos just to prove what I don't know. She doesn't even know if he actually lives in Lagos.
She has begged and begged to return. Now, I have no other choice but to bring her back because at the end of the day, she's my
daughter and my responsibility.
She left when she was about to start school at Bingham University. She has wasted 10 months doing nothing.
She has gone to see the other side of the grass. It can never be compared to the grass on my end.
That is why when I see responsible men that take good care of their families, I respect and regard them a lot. Some men do not believe that there are men that don't care about their kids. They are out there roaming around.
When a woman tries to protect their kids from a deadbeat father, most of the time, it's for their own good.
She has learned the hard way.
From Adia Ima Imaobong
