Some sell the children like commodities to any willing buyers. More horrendous evil is perpetrated against helpless babies.
The murderous acts are lamely explained in the developing countries by harrowing economic downturn of the times.
Here are gifts of the Most High thousands drive themselves from pillar to post to have.
Linda Ikeji, the frontline blogger, has just demonstrated to the world how priceless children are.
She briefed the world at every stage of the development in her body, and what to expect.
She had for a long time been preparing us for the arrival of the baby and excitedly told us it was a boy.
When she was jetting out to Atlanta to have her delivery the world was informed.
The celebratory announcement was made when the baby boy arrived. Hurrah, it is a boy, so the town crier said of her bundle of joy!
In churches, hardly does a prayer end without the supplication for the “fruits of the womb”.
The newlywed is lovingly showered with the same prayerful wishes. There are counseling sessions for ladies who long for babies of their own.
Paedritrics wings of hospitals are filled with women in search of end to their childlessness.
Some women in desperation steal babies from their cots in hospitals.
This brings to mind the case of a woman who, when she was 32, abducted a baby from a hospital room 20 years ago in Florida, United States, disguising as a nurse.
Gloria Williams, 52, was arrested early last year after a tip to authorities.
A DNA analysis confirmed that girl she named Kamiyah Mobly was not biologically hers but abducted.
The DNA analysis matched the parents of Kamiyah’s properties. When she was reunited with her parents she was promptly renamed Alexis Manigo.
Alexis’ passionate plea to the court for mitigation on grounds that her abductor gave her the best of life did not impress the court.
Gloria Williams was sentenced in June to 18 years behind bars.
She pleaded guilty to charges of felony kidnapping, saying she abducted the girl after she had a stillborn baby of her own.
This goes to show the length a childless woman can go to have a child.
It must therefore be horrifying that while some women throw away their babies, others go to the end of the world in search of them.
Two weeks ago, a lady went quietly into a bush near Ofada in Ogun State, carrying her twin babies.
She deposited one in the bush unknown to her that some people saw her going into the bush with a set of twins. She was arrested to be handed over to the police.
This contrasts with a moving, yet frightening incident of a mother’s love to which I once drew attention many years back.
It was a horrifying report of a bus which caught fire on motion on the Third Mainland Bridge.
The flaming vehicle, having lost its driver, sped on with its passengers trapped and screaming.
The screams grew faint…and silent after a while. The passengers had been suffocated in smoke and burnt.
The rudderless bus, a clear danger to other vehicles perhaps moving at a lesser speed in its direction, came to a gradual and jerky stop at its own time and pace.
Those dead were reported to be 25. The spectacle was horrendous.
In the dreadfulness and confusion that ensued, faced with death unappeased, moving and consuming relentlessly, a woman summoned courage and threw her five-month-old baby out of the window—to safety!
It came to her that, rather than the two of them, mother and child, dying in the fire, she should do everything to save her baby.
She did save her baby after which she surrendered herself to the rampaging fire!
It was a moving act of heroism, an extra-ordinary display of love that only woman is capable of.
Woman, it is, who is ever prepared to lay down her life for a loved one, to throw herself unreservedly, like mother hen, in defence of her child and loved one, and makes all the sacrifice so that her child may live, prosper and become a man of worth tomorrow.
Many will effortlessly recall denials mothers went through to nurse their children back to health and deprivations to see them through school and college.
She is the one to sense in the dead of the night that her baby in the next room is feeling uncomfortable from heat.
Such is the place of mothers that singers have never failed to accord their rightful place. Homage to motherhood is ever flowing.
From Christie Essien-Igbokwe to Funmi Adams to Onyeka to Fela, praise for motherhood is deservedly fulsome.
“Oh, sweet mother, I will never forget thee…” Mother is regarded as gold in the Yoruba culture, for example, and father only a reflection. She is regarded as a goddess.
“Orisa bi iya kosi.” There is no goddess like a mother, and so the song goes: “Iya ni wura iyebiye…” Mother is a priceless gold and the saying is:
“Iya ni wura,
Baba ni digi;
Ojo iya ku ni wura baje;
Ojo baba ku ni digi ola wo’mi.”
Thus the place of a mother, even if not of the woman, has always, from time immemorial, enjoyed top-grade honours in most cultures.
Different peoples have come to observe and perceive something unique, powerful, pulling and soothing in mothers.
Many a child, it has been observed, draws closer to its mother than it does to the father.
It is under her she finds succour, nourishment and guidance.
She is its teacher, counsellor and confidant, a veritable pillar of support. The special ties between the mother and the child are unmistakable.
To unravel the mystery of motherhood, there is certainly the need to unravel the mystery of woman since there must first be a woman before there can be a mother.
It follows that it is the sterling qualities of a woman that get transferred to a mother and manifest in her. Who then is a woman?
From where do her attributes come? Why are these special to women?
By virtue of her standing higher than men, women are endowed with greater capacity to draw from On High than their male counterparts.
Through their special spiritual make-up, they draw radiations from Beings who embody and mediate virtues to human beings.
Endued with this Grace, they in turn mediate it to men who are weaker in this regard.
So is it, therefore, that they are capable of greater love, and being able to soar in the waves of love than men—Love being God’s greatest gift to mankind and all His Creatures.
So is it that when the woman falls and love is perverted, no man can match a woman in cruelty!
A woman must then be bereft of love to throw away her baby in the bush, or abandon it by the roadside or on a refuse dump.
It can be no other conduct than callousness of the worst kind.
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