Life, indeed, has become nothing but drudgery for Mrs Margret Audu and her 17-year-old son, Joseph who got his younger sister, Maria Audu pregnant.
The family hails from Keana Local Government Area, Nasarawa State, but based in Lafia, the state capital, from where they visit their village from time to time to help with some farm work and other necessities.
At her base in Lafia, Mrs Audu does not only work with the state government as a primary school teacher, but she also runs a provision store in Lafia. The provision store is managed by her and her children after school hours.
She had lost her husband in one of the herdsmen attacks on farmers in the Southern part of the state in 2018. Her husband, Pius Audu, a retired local government official, was attacked and slaughtered by the herdsmen while he was relaxing in his house at the village.
Before his untimely death, he had four children from his marriage with Margaret, of which Joseph is the firstborn while Maria is the second. Joe had completed secondary school at the age of 17 while Maria completed JSS 3 and at the age of 15 and was preparing to become an SS1 student in January 2021.
With the full resumption of schools in Nasarawa State after the long break impelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mrs Audu, like other government workers in the state, was making serious efforts to meet up with the target set for them by the state government, namely, completing school calendar within the year.
In the circumstance, she hit on the idea of sending Joseph and Maria, his immediate younger sister, to the village, so that they would help in harvesting the guinea-corn and bene-seed that were ripe to avoid a situation where they would be destroyed by herdsmen.
Without any hesitation, Joseph and Maria relocated to Keana after completing their exams only for their mother to find that Maria was pregnant barely two months after they relocated.
Expressing her shock in a chat with newsmen, Mrs Audu said, “I am distressed, that my own daughter is pregnant for my son. Their father is not alive. Some herdsmen killed him in early 2018 in Keana, I don’t know how to handle this matter.
“They completed their exams, and I asked them to go to the village to harvest some of our crops since I was busy with work in Lafia and I knew that very soon, herdsmen would start grazing their cattle.
“Both of them had been in the village with my late husband’s relatives who were there to provide cover and protection for them, though they were coming to Lafia regularly to pick certain needs and I was also visiting them every weekend to help and encourage them.
“But last weekend, I visited them in the village and discovered that my daughter’s breasts had grown bigger and she was showing other signs of pregnancy. I then asked the two of them to follow me to Lafia.
“On getting to Lafia, I took her to a pharmacy where a pregnancy test was conducted on her and the result showed that she was pregnant.
“I asked her who was responsible for her pregnancy and she shockingly told me that she had not seen her period for two months, which meant she was pregnant and my son and firstborn, Joe, was responsible for it.
“They are my biological children. I only asked them to relocate to the village to help in farm work since Fulani people were destroying our crops. I never expected that a brother and sister would start an affair.
“Maria confessed to me that Joe was responsible for her pregnancy.”
She expressed disappointment at her children’s behaviour, saying: “It would have been better for Joe to tell me that he wanted to get married or look for a girlfriend to satisfy his urge instead of going into a love affair with his immediate younger sister.
“It is a very shameful thing; an abomination of the highest order. It is very wrong.”
Saying that she was ashamed and rattled by the development, she vowed to take “appropriate action” against the errant children once she recovered from the shock. She, however, ruled out the possibility of disowning them.
Meanwhile, Maria, the 15-year-old girl at the centre of the scandal, said it all started as a joke while they were in the farm but it ended up in an affair, and they continued in the same vein when they returned later that night.
She said: “I don’t know what came over both of us, I believe we were being controlled by the devil.
“How we suddenly started having sex on the farm is inexplicable. At the time I allowed him to enter me, I did not know that I was committing a wrong act. And more than two months into the affair, it never occurred to me that I was pregnant until my mother saw the signs and a confirmation was made by medical personnel that I was pregnant for almost three months.
“I have since regretted my actions. I want you to plead with my mother to help abort the pregnancy. I can’t keep it, The whole thing was the devil’s work and I completely regret it, I have pleaded for forgiveness.”
Joe, on his part said he had no words to explain what happened.
He said: “My mother is already angry and has vowed not to sponsor me in school again, I want to go to the university straight if I’m lucky to make my papers in WAEC, but it appears the devil is bent on frustrating me.
“I can’t really tell you how it started to the point where we are now. But what Maria told you is just the truth, I’m pleading with my mother to calm down and temper justice with mercy.”
Joe said he had deeply offended God as well as his mother and the entire family for going too far by sleeping with his younger sister to the level of getting her pregnant. He also pleaded with his mother to abort the pregnancy.
“I regret what happened. It is not in my character and the shame this very act has brought to me, my mother, my late father and the entire extended family is unbearable, I’m pleading with my mother to forgive me as it is the devil’s work,” he said.
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