How I Got Pregnant For My Uncle – 15yr Old Girl Shares Touching Story
A middle-aged man, Ikoabasi Dickson, resident in the neighbourhood of Bienvelu A L’ecole Eternal Ver at Bassa along airport road in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has confessed to the Head of Child Welfare Division (CWD) of the Social Development Secretariat (SDS) to having incest with his niece.
Relating how the incident happened, Mr. Ikoabasi told Mrs. Agnes Uta Hart, Head of CWD that he is the younger brother of late Iboro Dickson, husband to Eunice Iboro both of whom hail from Etemepu, in Etemepu Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State. When Iboro died three years ago, the younger brother came from Lagos and according to tradition, married Eunice the widow. They live in a two-bedroom apartment at Bassa built by Mr Ikoabasi.
Sometime last year, Eunice suspected her fifteen-year-old daughter Martha Iboro, to be pregnant having noticed some signs to that effect. When she confirmed her fear, the teenager who was in JSS 2 at the Airport Secondary School, told her mother that uncle Iboro was responsible for the pregnancy.
“My mother and uncle had a serious misunderstanding. After a long time, I saw water coming out of my body. When I told my mother she said it was labour. She took me to the Primary Healthcare Centre at Bassa where I was delivered of a baby girl on January 2, 2011,” she said.
Martha has different versions of how the illicit affair with her uncle who is also her mother’s husband started. She said she was not aware of how the whole thing happened. “When I return from school, I normally remove my clothes and sleep with only my singlet, but one day, I dreamt that someone was having an affair with me. When I woke up I saw blood coming from my body but I concluded that it was only a dream.”
Martha told the CWD that from the way things happened, she was raped. Yet she went ahead to plead, “I beg you, don’t punish my ‘father’. He is the only one taking care of me and my child.”
Mrs Hart asked Martha whether Ikoabasi promised her something before engaging in the act, she said there were no promises.
Ikoabasi said he could not tell whether Martha was a virgin or not when he first slept with her, because the girl did not show any sign of pain.
“When Eunice discovered that Martha was pregnant, she was not happy. I apologized and promised that such a thing will never happen again. Martha put to bed 4pm on January 2 and I named the child Endurance.
Reliable information gathered from the village disclosed that even when Endurance was less than a month old, Ikoabasi, Eunice and Martha left the baby alone at home and went to work. They never took her to church so that people would not discover their vice, Weekly Trust learnt. Denying the statement, Ikoabasi said nothing like that happened. He said they all loved the child and would not allow anything to harm her. As for taking her to church, the father said the baby has to reach three months before they can do that. Ikoabasi also denied the rumour that after the alleged incest, he took a goat to Akwa Ibom Association meeting to assuage the members but the goat was rejected. “I never went there with a goat; not even a chicken,” he defended.
A perplexed Mrs. Hart asked Dickson: “if this union with Eunice is blessed with a child, what relationship would exist between Martha’s daughter-Endurance and Eunice’s child? There is no English name for that kind of relationship.
“This lust for incest is an abomination which our department is making efforts to manage. We need to control our desires, control our lust. We equally need to counsel our children,” Mrs. Hart said, adding that “if an armed robber rapes a woman and she gets pregnant, our advice to such a victim is to keep it. After delivery, if she does not want the child, she can give it to us. We will take care of it,” she said.
Eunice told the CWD that before Iboro Dickson died, he told her to stay with Ikoabasi Dickson and never to return his two children home. She said they had been living together peacefully until the incident happened. She was not aware of what was going on and how Ikoabasi sneaks out of bed in the night to sleep with Martha. “He often woke up in the night to urinate and I have never been suspicious of him, let alone notice what he was up to. When I noticed she was pregnant, it was already two months old. When I met my husband, he apologized and the two of them were begging me for forgiveness,” she cried.
Martha said the illicit sex affair started sometimes last year when her uncle slept with her twice. “After doing it for the second time, he said he was going to do it again. I was in JSS 2 then.” I stopped going to school when I got pregnant for my `father`.”
“It happened in 2010 when I carelessly had sexual intercourse with her – I call it carelessly because it was a mistake, we decided that we should not add more mistakes to the existing one and therefore allowed her to carry the pregnancy. I slept with her twice and it was with her consent. The first one happened during the daytime in form of play.”
Yet Martha explained that she slept on the floor with her younger brother, Wisdom, but uncle Iboro would sneak out of their mother’s bed to sleep with her while her younger brother turned his face in the opposite direction. Denying that it was twice, Martha explained, “He did it on many occasions for a long time leaving a day interval until I could not see my menstruation again. When he wanted to do it the first and second time, he came with `blow-blow` (condom) and inflated it. He continued coming, he never used balloon again. Even when test revealed that I was pregnant, he was still having sex with me. On a certain occasion, he came down from the bed and was having sex with me in the midnight. When my mother realized what was going on, she woke up from bed and tore me from him and gave me severe beating. She warned me never to allow him engage in such an act during pregnancy.”
On why Martha is not breast-feeding Endurance, Eunice explained that her daughter stopped breastfeeding the baby when she was two weeks old because Martha had pains in the breasts and health experts advised her to stop breastfeeding. She could not act against medical advice. “No one is interested in punishing the baby,” she defended.
Eunice said Martha would return to a boarding school far away from home while the child remained in the mother/grand-mother’s custody.
Martha told Mrs. Hart that she is already in love with Ikoabasi, her `father` because she had already had a child for him. “Do you want to take over your mother’s husband?” head of the CWD in amazement quarried, “You are all taking this like a joke,” she exclaimed. Mrs Hart predicted that if something is not done soon, in the future, Martha will fight her mother over Ikoabasi since she now has a right over him because of the child.
“We want to sanitize Nigeria,” said Hart. “We want to hand over to our children what our parents handed over to us. A child like this cannot be your child. Our interest is in the child not you the parents. How can you remain in the midst of mother and daughter sleeping with both?” she wondered at the Ikaobasi family.
