‘How I Was Kidnapped, Sold In Cameroun’—12-Year-Old Girl

By Adetutu Audu

A 12-year-old girl, identified as Elizabeth Okereke, has narrated how she was kidnapped, five years ago, and sold in Cameroun.

Narrating her ordeal to P.M.News, Okereke, who was seven when she was kidnapped, said it happened in January, 2003, on her way from school.

“I was coming back from school and was waiting for a Kabu kabu when about five men in a car called my name and said my father asked them to bring me,” she said.

According to Okereke, immediately she entered into the car, two of the five men, she later identified as Obi and Kenneth, took her into a big house and told her she will be travelling with other members of her family to Paris.

Okereke told P.M.News that she stayed in the house for two months before she was later taken to the airport and she travelled to Cameroun.

She explained that her abductors told her she would meet her family there. But to her surprise, Okereke said she met about seven other children in a big house in Yaounde, Cameroun. She was later taken to a woman, she identified as Madam Victoria, in exchange for some money.

“The men took me to one woman who paid them some money,” she said. Okereke told P.M.News she stayed in Madam Victoria’s big mansion for more than two years and was treated like her daughter because she is rich and had no child.

According to her, Madam Victoria gave her another name, Pierrette. And she is answering her family’s name Lebomo. Okereke later observed that her abductors, who she said always visit her new home, began to trouble her adopted mother for more money.

Sensing that Madam Victoria was not ready to part with more money, Okereke said the men kidnapped her again from the house when the madam was not at home. “One day, the men came to our home again. My mother had gone to the shop where she sells and they were playing with me. They asked me to come outside with them, pushed me into a car and sped off,” she said.

Okereke, who is now with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons, NAPTIP, said she was kept in an orphanage and later taken into a big house in a thick bush, and forced to do domestic job for eight months and lived with her abductors.

One day, she told them she wanted to fetch water, and that was how she was able to run away to Douala. Okereke told P.M.News that she hid in Douala stadium without the security guards knowing and any time there were sports events, she begged for money.

The 12-year-old girl, who now speaks French fluently, said one day she approached a food vendor at the stadium for help and later told the food vendor her story. The food vendor took her to the Nigerian consulate in Douala, which later took her to Nigeria Embassy in Cameroun.

Okereke, who had vague description of her last home address, said her father’s name is Eric and her stepmother is called Kemi and her younger ones Frank and Umar.

The last school she attended before her ordeal, she said, is St. Theresa Catholic School, Ota. However, P.M.News investigation revealed that there is no St. Theresa School in Ota, but St. Peters Catholic School, RCM, Ota. Speaking with P.M.News, the head teacher, Mrs. V.V. Akinsanya, said there is no record of such in the school.

Speaking also on the issue, Mr. Morka, Zonal Head of NAPTIP, Ikoyi, Lagos, said the agency will try its best to locate the family of the girl. He said since she was kidnapped at a tender age, she could not really recognise anywhere again.