A middle-aged man, Olalowo Hammed Olalekan and his wife, Modinat, has had to flee from the shores of the country with their children, to escape the wrath of his kinsmen after he was beaten to a pulp for refusing to allow his baby daughter undergo female genital mutilation which his community insisted on.
According Olalekan who spoke out in hiding, his people had mandated on him and his wife to present their daughter for circumcision, with the understanding that it would curb infidelity in the future but when he and his wife refused to hand over their daughter to be subjected to the painful and needless circumcision, they became marked people.
While his wife managed to escape with the children, Olalekan was not so lucky as he was captured while attempting to run away and beaten to a pulp and left for dead but he managed to stay alive and escaped later.
Olalekan recalled of the beating he got from his kinsmen:
“I thought I had died. I was bleeding all over my body with swollen face and cuts on my body. What I experienced from them is not what I wish anybody. If it were my wife or children, they may not have survived it.”
“I was on my way home when some men began taunting me for not allowing my daughter to be circumcised, rather aided their disappearance.
Before I knew it, they had pounced on me and beaten me to a pulp. It is God that kept me alive after the beating I got.”
-PULSE NG
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