Lady Dumps Baby Boy In Toilet, Then Goes To Church To Repent

The bizarre action of a lady in Calabar, Miss Emem Okon who dumped her one-day old baby  in a toilet and headed to church to attend church service is still confounding neighbours and residents of Abua Street where she lived and the adjoining Fenton Street, Calabar.

The incident took place at 21, Abua Street in Calabar South. Miss Emem who occupies a one-room apartment in the thatch house which her mother occupied before she passed on last year, gave birth to a baby boy in the wee hours of Sunday, 17 April in the room and to free herself from the reponsibility of taking care of the child, took him to the pit toilet at the back of the house and dumped him there.

The boy was discovered in the toilet by a six-year old girl, Esther Okon who went to ease herelf in the toilet at about 10 O’clock on Sunday morning.

“I went to the toilet to ease myself and when I dropped the paper I used inside the toilet it hit something hard and I heard something move and I looked insde and saw that there was somebody inside the toilet,” she said.

Mr Victor Itam, the Councilor representing Ward 8 in Calabar South Local Government Legislature who was contacted after the discovery, said he went to the place to make sure the story was true and when he confirmed that it was true he informed the Chairman of Calabar South, Mr Ewa Henshaw who called in the police.

“The lady in question, after dumping the baby went to Apostolic Church, Edgerley Road. I took the police there but the preeacher would not allow the police to take take her while the sermon was going on. I had to position my boys at the gate of the church who held her after service and we called the police who took her to the station.”

Mr. Itam said he refused the appeals of the lady who claimed that the man who impregnated her ran away.

“She said: ‘Honourable please, a man like you did this to me and ran away. I will not do it again that was why I went to church to repent.’ I wonder what kind of sermon can change that kind of person,” the councilor said.

The police spokesman for the Cross River Police Command, ASP Etim Dickson, said he was not aware of the incident but police soures at Mbukpa Police Division in Calabar South said the woman was taken to the Moore Road Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday and the matter was adjourned till 28 April, 2011.

She is being remanded at the Ofukang Prisons while the baby was buried at the Hawkins Road Cemetry.

—Emma Una/ Calabar