Inside Ondo: 3-Month-Old Baby Missing From Juvenile Home

VAM News Update

A widow, Opeyemi Adegboyega, has dragged the Ondo state government before the state high court, over the alleged disappearance his 3-month-old child, Oluwaseun Omoniyi, in the custody of the state Juvenile Home, in Akure, the state capital.

The woman has demanded for sum of N95m as damages over his missing son.

Adegboyega also joined both the state Commissioner for Women Affairs and the state Attorney General of Ondo State, in the suit.

According to her, the son was admitted into the juvenile home in 2017, when he was three months old while she was hospitalised for one month.

The claimant said that the state juvenile home, volunteered to help take care of her 3 children, including the 3-month-old boy, while she was on admission in the hospital.

Adegboyega added that after discussing with her mother, they agreed to leave only the 3-month-old boy being the youngest with the juvenile home while others were taken into custody by her mother.

After she was discharged from the hospital, and went back to demand for her baby, she and her mother were told that the baby had died and that the corpse had been deposited at the mortuary of the State Specialist Hospital.

But, according to her, on getting to the hospital, government officials denied receiving any corpse of a child from the Ondo State Juvenile Home at that period.

”Since then all petitions on the matter to the state Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, the Ministry of Women Affairs and the Department of State Services had yielded no result.

The claimant, who filed the suit through her lawyer, Mr Oju Kekemeke, sought an order of the court directing the defendants to account for the whereabouts of Omoniyi Oluwaseun whose disappearance occurred while in the custody of the Ondo State Juvenile Home under the supervision of the Ondo State Ministry of Women Affairs.

Adegboyega also sought an order of the court to direct the defendants to pay her a sum of N50 million as “exemplary and aggravated damages”, N40million as general damages for the excruciating pain, anguish, personal loss, and psychological trauma caused by the negligent act of the defendants, as well as N5million damages as “cost of this action.”

She also sought a court order that 15 percent interest per annum be paid on the judgment sum from the date of the judgment until the judgment sum is finally liquidated.

Adegboyega’s lawyer, Oju Kekemeke, vowed that the matter would be pursued untill her client got justice.

Kekemeke said that “It is unfortunate that the system took advantage of Opeyemi Adegboyega’s medical condition at the time, therefore the system will be held accountable for this flagrant breach of public duty,”