Khadijat Vivian, a 38-year-old-woman who had her baby forcefully taken from her 22 years ago by Reverend D. C. Ogo, the founder of Arrows of God Orphanage Home, has cried out for help in retrieving her baby. Khadijat reached out to FIJ after belatedly stumbling on ‘Arrows of God’, FIJ’s undercover investigation exposing how one of Nigeria’s biggest orphanages had been selling babies under the table in exchange for cash. She spoke with ‘FISAYO SOYOMBO.

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INTRODUCTIONS

A: My name is Khadijat Vivian. My maiden surname is Yusuf. My husband works with the Nigerian Air Force, and I’m not sure he wants his information out, so I’ll leave his surname out.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Okay. I was born to Mrs. Lecha Akwart, a Cameroonian, and Mallam Jimoh Yusuf, from Kogi state. My mum and my dad are separated. They were never really married, which I later on got to find out. My dad didn’t even know the place where my mum came from. I don’t know whatever transpired between them, but I know as a child, I found my father handcuffed from Okene back to Jos through the Nigerian Police, and then, I was handed over to my mother.

During that time, I faced a lot of abuse from my mother; little things could make her put pepper in my eyes… little misdemeanours usually found with children. I have two children with my husband now, and I can’t imagine myself brutalising them as much as I was brutalised. I mean, my children are my world. I grew up with all those abuse; I cried out a lot of times to even the Deeper Life Church authorities, but my mother always found a way of telling them that I was possessed. 

READ ALSO: ARROWS OF GOD: One of Nigeria’s Biggest Orphanages Is Trading Babies for Cash

SEXUALLY ASSAULTED BY UNCLE IN CAMEROON

Sometime in my young life, she flung me to Cameroon to stay with her mother, and that was where I found out that I equally had a senior brother from my mother, whom my mother had also abandoned there in Cameroon, and who was now in prison for theft. During that period, my uncle sexually molested me.

In fact, before I never thought I’ll ever discuss this publicly like this. Two months ago or so, I think I cried my eyes out again… to tell you how painful my past was, I still raised the dust about it to my aunt, and she sidestepped it and told me I was trying to create war instead of peace, that families have their issues and I should shelve it, that no matter what her brother did to me, it wouldn’t make her love him less. I have an audio of that conversation on my phone.

All these things I got punished for; even for speaking out that my uncle was sexually assaulting me, I got beaten up until he was caught red-handed by one of my late aunties. So I ran to the Nigerian Embassy in Cameroon and told them I was not a Cameroonian, that my mother flung me there and I wanted to return and trace who my father was. I felt I stood a better chance with him.

They did all their findings and discovered I was saying the truth. So, they put me on a flying boat, and asked me if I could trace my mother’s house back. I said yes, and they gave me some money in my hand, and I came back to Nigeria, to my mother’s place. There, I took the documents about my father’s name, and started tracing my father.

In the process of tracing my dad, I found out that my dad equally was a conman, and I now understood why she would insult me, telling me things like ‘you’re going to be a fraudster like your father’. All those things I found out; so, yes, most of the things she was saying about my dad were true. I cannot count the number of times security came to handcuff him. I was a student of St. Peters College then.

IMPREGNATED BY RAPIST IN LAGOS

I left from there. After my WAEC, and a lot of beating, she had told me: don’t come back to my house; since you say it’s your father you want to live with, you will live there. I took off to Lagos, I got to Lagos, and my first day in Lagos was at a restaurant on Toyin Street, Allen Avenue. I’ll never forget; a band was playing a live band. As I sat down there, one of the musicians put the microphone close to me and asked me to sing, and I said couldn’t sing. He asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He told me I could come and be singing in this place. Of course, I had nowhere to sleep. 

On one of those nights, I got raped on that Toyin Street. I didn’t know anything, sir [sobs], and it was much later I discovered that I was pregnant.

There was nowhere to go because what I used to do was that after people finished singing and they left, we would sit down in the restaurant, bring chairs together and hang our legs on them to sleep until the following morning. Then in the morning we would go to the bathroom by the corner of the restaurant, and try to take our bath, then we would start walking around in the morning until it’s night when the singing would take place again.

WATCH: DOCUMENTARY ARROWS OF GOD

ENDING UP AT ARROWS OF GOD

When the pregnancy began to become big, somebody from that place told me about this orphanage that she knows about, that I could go there. It was one of the waitresses on Toyin Street who told me; I went there.

The mama — ‘Mama D. C. Ogo’, that’s what they called her — welcomed me and said I could stay there but she said immediately I put to bed, I had to be going around to look for money to buy pampers for my baby, for which I was very grateful. I had slept under staircases, I had slept inside restaurants; and this was a bed for me to lie down in with the pregnancy. I cannot begin to tell you what I went through as a 16-year-old girl.

A SUSPICIOUS INSTRUCTION: NO MORE BREAST MILK

So, when I put to bed, one months, two months, three months… she started telling me that I should not breastfeed the baby again, that I should introduce the baby to baby formula.

At that time, I didn’t find it harmful since I would be going out in the night to go sing, and return in the morning; I thought I should start allowing the nannies feed her with baby food. So, I’d go and sing; and by that time, my singing skills were getting better, so they’ll spray me money and the band would divide it into three; they’d take part of it and give you the rest.

So there were about 10 girls at that time in that orphanage; roughly 10, I think, alongside me. Or maybe we were about 11 or so who had babies with them, so I didn’t find anything strange, because I’d wake up in the morning, we would all sweep the place, wash the children’s clothes, cook, do things for the other grown-up orphans around. I discovered that children too were leaving the orphanage, but at 15, 16 years of age, I cannot tell you that I was settled to think about anything. Truthfully, sir, I wasn’t thinking of anything.. It’s now that I’m more mature that I sit back and say, wow, I was actually in the midst of a baby factory place and I never knew. 

READ ALSO: BREAKING: Arrest Made, Arrows of God Orphanage Sealed After FIJ’s Investigation

Sometimes, two of the ladies just disappeared, like the next morning, we didn’t see them. I was worried, sir. 

One day, I told her I wanted to take the baby, but she never used to want to allow me take the baby out. I was the one catering for the baby, but I was desperate, sir. My baby had a place to sleep, I had somewhere to sleep. But at that moment, it was okay for me, even though I never actually slept in the orphanage after my baby turned three months or so. I never actually slept in the orphanage, as I’ll actually sing overnight and come back in the morning.

So, that day, I said I wanted to take the baby out. I remembered, because my mum is a Deeper Life member, that she had a friend at the time who was married to one pastor in Ayobo.

So, I said let me trace them, maybe with them I’m safer, because there were talks, little little talks going on among the girls. I’m not going to hide it, but as it is, sir, my brain was not thinking the way I’m thinking now. I cannot tell you lies, sir, but I knew something was wrong. I went to Ayobo, I met with mummy Charity Adelegan, I met with her. I actually had to talk to people who knew her from Jos, and that was how they led me to her husband who was a pastor there, and pastor took me home to see her with the baby.

When I got to her, I narrated everything that had happened. Of course, it was always my mother’s words against mine; I don’t think people understood abuse then the way people understand it right now. At that time, everything your mother said against you stood. She had her own ideas: ‘oh, this child is possessed, this child is this. I didn’t know what else to tell her’. She allowed me stay that night, and the next morning, she told me I needed to go back, you know, how you use style to send somebody out of your house. I carried the baby, I went back to Arrows of God, because that was the only place I knew to go to with the baby.

LOCKED OUT OF ARROWS OF GOD

I went back; mama quarrelled with me: where did I go to? I said I went to my mother’s place. She asked why I would. A lot of talk. She said if I tried that next time, she would throw me and the baby out. I apologised that I was very sorry. It continued again: about three more babies, we didn’t see anybody like that coming in for them. Like I said, I was very young, sir. There was nothing in my head upstairs. Sometime again, I carried the child…I traced another of our family friend again, who was living with Pastor Joe Olaiya of Living Faith church.

I told you my mother stayed in Sokoto and had issues as a teenager and ran like myself. I traced one Dr. Muyiwa; he was a pastor. He allowed me stay for a week, then he asked me to take the baby back to my mother. Of course, I knew my mother would never welcome me back with that baby, knowing who my mother was. So, I went back again to Arrows of God Orphanage. By that time, Sister Charity had contacted my mother. So I would leave the baby, go look for a livelihood and come back the following day. There was a show we were supposed to go for, a Peak Milk show in Iju Ishaga. That was when my mum came around and when she came, I don’t know what Rev. Ogo and my mother discussed, but when I came back from the show I was not granted entry into the premises.

READ ALSO: THE INSIDER: Arrows of God Has Been Selling Babies for Over A Decade — And the Police Are Aware

Q: You were not granted entry into Arrows of God premises?

A: Yes, sir. 

Q: And your baby was there? 

A: My baby was there, sir. 

Q: Okay, do you remember the date? 

A: No, but it was on a Monday. It was in 2001, sir. September. I knocked on the gate three times. The gateman now whispered to me that my mother came there with a woman and that they had left, and madam gave instructions that nobody should allow me into the premises. I was banging the gate, sir. I said I would not go anywhere. Okay,  they should give me my baby; let me go with my baby, that was when about one hour later, when I was sitting down, the police came in one Peugeot 504. I just heard a loud slap on my face; they beat me and literally dragged me into that car, sir.

Q: That’s in front of Arrows of God? 

A: Yes, sir. They dragged me into the car. I was inside the police cell with adults, sir. So, for weeks, I counted days until I got tired of counting. There were days they would bring me out to sweep all those their offices. Poeple sat down; nobody bothered to ask what a small girl like me was doing in cell.

Q: Do you know the name of the police station? 

A: Mushin.

Q: Mushin Police Station? 

A: Yes, sir.

After that bridge that leads as if it’s going to Ojuelegba, that side that leads to Mushin; there’s one police station by the right. I stayed for weeks upon weeks in that police station, sir. I was even molested; most times, some would even touch my breast.

One day, the DPO called me to the office. Whether it’s DPO  or DCO, I don’t know. She entered, she sat down, she said that [I would not be released] unless I signed that I would not come back to that orphanage again, that even my mother had told her horrible stories [about me]…

If I wanted my child dead, will I come to you? Will I be going out to work and coming to buy pampers and baby milk for my baby, will I? If my mother was so good and she didn’t have any children with her, what stopped her from taking her own grandchild? I’ve pondered on that for years, sir, until I saw your post this morning and I realised that monies must have passed hands.

READ ALSO: Multiple Strange Phone Numbers Call Soyombo After ‘Arrows of God’ Investigation

Q: Where are you based right now? 

A: I’m in Jos. I’m married. Even after that, sir, I still went back again and again…and the third time she arrested me again, and the police that arrested me didn’t even take me to the station; they first took me[somewhere] to beat me before they went and now locked me in the night, in the station, that I was playing with my life.

At that point, I told myself to give up. This was a colonel in the Nigerian army who knew me, who knew my own mother had no love for me. Who would stand by me? So I gave up, and I went back after they released me.

After they released me, I signed another document. They said this time, they would charge me to court and send me into prison. So I weighed my options, sir, and I backed out. I discussed this much later after I got to meet my mother; she was sick and she needed me. Somehow, I was in Abuja, working in a hotel as a singer at that time, and I ran into her.

I was very shocked, because the mother I left in Jos, I ran into her one Monday market in Garki, and that was how I was told she had a shop. I asked the neighbours, and I told them, you see that woman there, she’s my mother. They said, oh, that it’s not possible, that my mother said she doesn’t have children, her children are dead.

MEETING HER HUSBAND

I met my husband while schooling in Kaduna. I narrated everything to my husband when he told me he wanted to marry me. I said I have excess baggage: this is my life story; this is everything; he said no problem.

When they went to get across to my mum, my mum told my mother-in-law that that she won’t allow her innocent son to marry me, that I was a prostitute. She asked my husband to my face that: has she told you that she has a child she abandoned in one orphanage? My husband told her: yes, my wife has told me, and I have on a lot of occasions tried to reach out to that same orphanage; she was shocked! She now said I’m a better person, that she never believed that I would open up and to my man. I said, yes, because I’m innocent; that’s why I told my husband what I was going through.

CHASING ARROWS OF GOD AS AN ADULT

We reached out again [to Arrows of God] when we were in Kaduna; a woman picked the phone; she was very rude. After a continuous calls, she blocked my line; we couldn’t reach it again. Last year, I still tried to get across; same thing. When my mother had diabetes this March, sometime in March or April, and was literally incapable of handling herself, I had to go pick her up from Abuja and bring her to Jos to take care of her.

I raised this subject with her; she said I should just forget about that baby, that time had passed, that I’ve given birth to other children. I said no matter how long, even if I have five children, that’s my first fruit. I won’t forget; I’ll still keep trying until something comes up.

I tried calling the [Arrows of God] number again. Another lady [answered] again. She identified herself as ‘Mama Prosper’ and told me the orphanage was now based in Lekki, that they did not have records of anything like that. I said I didn’t abandon my child. No matter how much I tried to explain what happened, she turned it on me and cut the call and blocked me. 

Every single word I told you, sir, is true. Every single word. And I don’t think I’m the only victim. I think that most of us at that time were so vulnerable; it’s not like this computer age now that everything is on social media. I’m sure if I knew what I know now, my child won’t be lost, sir. Unfortunately, she cashed in on a lot of us because of our vulnerability.