By Kunle Falayi Punchng
Blessing, Anani and Akuvi
Life is hard for Sojine Anani and his wife, Akuvi, a Togolese couple who came to settle in Nigeria about 10 years ago. This was immediately obvious right from the entrance of the cemented red-brick bungalow they live in on a street in Shasha, Akowonjo area of Lagos.
The Ananis live in a small one-room apartment with their three young children.
But between 2am and 4am on Monday, May 26, 2014, night marauders came calling in their home when Akuvi’s husband was away at work in Apapa area of Lagos.
Their target was one single thing; the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Blessing.
“I wish I did not come to Nigeria for a better life. My life is finished now, my child is gone,” Akuvi said.
“My life is over, I can’t stand this agony. I never knew a child could be stolen while asleep in her own house in the middle of the night. I knew thieves break in to steal money and other valuables, but I never heard of thieves breaking in to steal a child.
“This is unfair. I don’t even feel safe again. The police are not helping at all. Had I known, I would have stayed back in Togo. I am finished,” she told our correspondent.
Akuvi, a trader in her 20s, wobbled out of a corner in which she had sat looking like someone in a trance. When our correspondent first spoke with her, there was no impression that she understood anything she heard as she stared at the floor.
She looked up when one of her relations shook her shoulder. Her eyes shone like someone who was under a spell.
But Akuvi was not under any supernatural force. Her spirit had simply been rendered dormant since her daughter was abducted right under her nose, through the window of their bedroom, while she was sleeping.
On Sunday (May 25) Sojine left for work in Apapa. By nightfall, his young wife and three children went to sleep, in the same room.
But by morning, the girl among the children was missing.
Akuvi, a fair complexioned young woman, was dressed in a T-shirt and wrapper that did not seem to have been changed for days when she spoke with Saturday PUNCH.
She strung along her words slowly but once in a while, her face creased into a sob that threatened her coherence.