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HEARTBREAKING: “Daddy, Mummy will still celebrate your day in your absence” – Parents of little girl abducted in Abuja

HEARTBREAKING: “Daddy, Mummy will still celebrate your day in your absence” – Parents of little girl abducted in Abuja

It has been a year and four months since the Umars last set eyes on their daughter, Khadijah.

Khadijah didn’t go on a desirable vacation to see the most beautiful places around the world, she was snatched away from her parents by an unidentified woman in Kuje, Abuja, on November 19, 2016.

The little girl, only two years and few months old at the time, had happily followed another young boy to buy milk cake.

Khadijah would not return home to the waiting arms of her then pregnant mother. She was snatched on a lonely pathway by the woman who tricked the little children into believing she was as harmless as their mothers.

Umar Suleiman, Khadijah’s father, was devastated.

He made several attempts to ensure his baby was back in no time. Facebook posts, endless visits to several police stations, media interviews – he left no room for lapses. All his efforts were to no avail.

Little Khadijah, whom her father fondly refers to as ‘Nana’, before she was abducted. Photo: Umar Suleiman/Facebook

Khadijah’s mother was forced into premature labour. The sudden disappearance of her baby girl, along with a baby due any minute, was too much of a burden to bear.

Days turns into weeks, and weeks, into months; Khadijah’s abductor remained at large.

Since her disappearance, Suleiman has taken it as his other day job, to judiciously follow news regarding arrested child abductors across the country.

In fact, he makes it a duty to post any news about arrested child kidnappers on his Facebook regularly, hoping that one day, his child’s abductor would be found and she’d lead him to where Khadijah is kept.

He openly celebrates the arrest of child abductors and the safe return of little kids to their parents, as he would do his, while he blames the government for not providing adequate security for children of the poor.

Suleiman makes it a duty to regularly post news about arrested child abductors.

Any news of the release of abducted schoolgirls was always an added opportunity for Suleiman to pray for the safe return of his own darling little girl.

In one of his posts, Suleiman lamented the urgency with which the police rearrested suspected political thugs who accused Senator Dino Melaye of being their godfather. He wishes same level of urgency would be applied in bringing his daughter back home.

He wrote: “The Nigerian police have successfully arrested all the six suspects in the case of senator Dino within days of their escape. Yet, the abductors of over 200 children in the FCT and its environs are still at large for over two years now. Maybe because no child of a senator have be abducted. No son or daughter of DSS is involved. Very soon the poor will have nothing to eat, but the rich and their children.”

In one of his usual Facebook posts about Khadijah on Monday, Suleiman revealed she would be a year older next week.

“Khadija next week is your birthday, despite still been in abduction for over 16 months. Daddy and mummy will still celebrate your day in your absence. HBD in advance Nana Khadija,” he wrote.

When Newsroom called the doting father on Tuesday (today), his voice had gone weary from worry and dejection.

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“There is still no positive news,” he told us.

“A child kidnapping syndicate was busted last month in Anambra and one of the suspects confessed she had abducted children from Kuje. When I reached out to them, I was only told they’d get back to me after two weeks. Till today, they are yet to.

“I even went to NAPTIP centre here in Abuja, I was told the same (that they’d get back to me),” Suleiman said.

He confirmed that Khadijah’s little brother, who had yet to meet his sister, was doing okay, while the mother was “just hanging in there”.

Newsroom gathers that some notorious child kidnap syndicates are still in full operation in several parts of the country, trading abducted children for cash in most circumstances.

A call put through to the IPO of the Kuje police station was unanswered at the time of this report.

Suleiman, heartbroken and tired from chasing after police operatives in Abuja, continues to have sleepless nights about the whereabouts of his little daughter – whom he fondly calls ‘Nana’.

Hope, is all he, and his small family, have left.

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