Woman Boils Two-Year-Old Stepdaughter’s Hands

Residents of Langbasa, a community in Ajah area of Lagos, are accusing a woman in the neighbourhood of causing a grievous harm on her two-year-old stepdaughter.

Kehinde, as she’s known, is in trouble for allegedly dipping the two hands of her little stepdaughter, Esther, into oven-hot water.

The girl’s hands were boiled terribly, and many are raising concern that one of them might have become utterly useless. Esther, it was gathered, has lost her own mum about a year ago a few days after her first birthday. The poor little girl has since been living with her father, known among residents of the area as Baba Eleja. Baba Eleja, Esther’s dad, later brought in Kehinde, a mother of three, as his wife. He put Esther in the care of his new wife, Kehinde.

Trouble started for the woman on Wednesday, October 31. She wasn’t feeling good and invited a nurse to prescribe drugs for her. It was the nurse that noticed Esther’s boiled hands. The nurse also realised that the little girl was very unhealthy. She sought to know what was responsible for the little girl’s condition and Kehinde allegedly explained that the girl mistakenly put her hands inside a bucket of hot water in the room. Obviously not satisfied with that explanation, the nurse went to inform Kehinde’s neighbours about the strange development.

Many of the neighbours, who had all along suspected that all was not well with little Esther as Kehinde was always beating her, rushed to the room to see the girl. One of the neighbours, who described himself as her father’s kinsman, spoke to the reporter. His words: “When we saw Esther, lying on the floor with her boiled hands, we were moved to tears. We feared that the poor girl might die any moment from then.

We quickly made efforts to rush her to the hospital for treatment. I don’t think Esther was the one that dipped her own hands in the hot water. In fact, if you see that damage done on those hands, you would know that somebody must have dipped those hands in some boiling water. The hands were boiled to the wrist. Even that poor girl wouldn’t be able to use one of the hands again.” Another resident of the area, a woman, said Kehinde never spared the cane on the little girl.

“She is always beating the girl with canes. You can even see scars of the wounds that her canes inflicted on the girl’s body. Since we noticed what happened to Esther, we have moved her away from the woman. Earlier today, when the girl saw her stepmother, she was so terrified that she cried and ran away. That shows she (Kehinde) has been wicked to her. I advise the relatives of the girl’s mother to take her away from her father so that something more terrible than this doesn’t happen to her,” she told the reporter.