A teenage mother, Timilehin Adesina, who was arrested for abandoning her 4-month-old baby in Lagos State has blamed poverty for her act.
The 18-year-old woman abandoned her baby under Oshodi Bridge in the state. Operatives of the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences (Enforcement) Unit, Wednesday recovered the baby from a sack under the bridge.
The operatives were on a raid to dislodge commercial buses causing obstruction on highways in the area when one of them saw Adesina dumping the child.
The official was said to have walked down to the spot and found the baby naked in the bag, while the mother had fled. Confirming the incident to newsmen, the task force Chairman, SP Olayinka Egbeyemi, said the streetlights around the bridge exposed the woman.
He said, “The officer spotted from distance that someone dropped a bag and started running. “He quickly moved towards the bag and when he saw that it was a baby that was packaged inside it, he chased the woman and arrested her.”
Following her arrest, Adesina confessed that her mother sent her and the baby out as she could not identify the baby’s father.
Explaining why she dumped him, the Ogun state indigene said “My mother sent me out because I could not identify the man who impregnated me. I had sex with different men.
“I dropped out from school out of poverty while in JSS 2. I was living with my mother at 26, Coker Street, Ejigbo, Lagos and my father died nine years ago.”
The state Commissioner of Police, CP, Fatai Owoseni, also confirmed the incident. The CP directed that both the rescued baby and his mother be immediately transferred to Social Welfare Department of the Lagos State Ministry of Youths and Social Development.
