Godfrey George writes about how the myth that sleeping with mentally-unstable women brings wealth has fuelled crime in Nigeria, causing these women to become victims of continuous sexual abuse.
No one seemed to know when Ibiene Egbo’s mental illness began. Some residents, who claimed to have known her, said it started sometime in 2006. Others said it was way after then.
However, a close family source, who did not want to be identified for fear of stigmatisation, said Ibiene was attacked by what he described as ‘spiritual arrows’ in 2009.
She was a nursery school minder at a popular nursery and primary school along Akie-Ama Road, Bonny Island, Rivers State, and was loved by the parents of her class pupils as a ‘very kind’ caregiver.
As a pioneer staff member when the school kicked off around 1999, she had her hands full.
She taught the kids letters of the alphabet, how to count and do simple sums.
She also picked them up from their homes and took them back at the close of school around 11am.
A former colleague of the victim, Mrs Itee (surname withheld), who claimed to have worked with her for more than five years in the school, said at the time they were together, Ibiene did not show any sign of mental illness.
Describing her as cautious and brilliant, Itee said she was shocked when she got the news that Ibiene was roaming the streets with a pregnancy.
“This world is a wicked place. If I did not see Ibiene in tattered clothes and the pregnancy, I would not have believed the news,” Itee added.
She noted that July or August 2008 was the last time she saw her.
Her stomach, according to Itee, was protruding and she (Ibiene) could not recognise her, even as she called out her name while trying to get her attention.
It was people around who asked her if she did not know that the lady had mental issues.
“I was transfixed for more than an hour. I did not remember where I was going. I wanted to follow her but people would look at me in a funny manner,” she added.
She explained that she had to reach out to another old-time colleague, who told her that the pregnancy she saw was Ibiene’s second or third.
“What I don’t know is who was responsible for the pregnancy or who always got her pregnant. I knew she had a daughter then. Nobody seems to know whether she had any family or where exactly she came from, as many said she was an Igbo woman who naturalised in Rivers State.
“There are a lot of things I do not know,” Itee said with a wearied tone.
A troubled mind
In 2009, Ibiene reportedly married a man who lived across the river.
She sailed on a canoe to come to town to work and buy groceries, before sailing back.
Her first child, our correspondent learnt, lived with a family friend in town.
Although there were reports that Ibiene’s daughter left home over alleged rape by a relation, a family source, who spoke to our reporter, was silent on the matter.
The source simply hinted that a ‘situation’ warranted the child to live with someone in town.
One day in March 2009, the source said the daughter suddenly disappeared from where she lived.
“The girl was still in primary school. Very young girl! She left the house, and for months, no one heard from her. All efforts to find her proved abortive,” the source added.
Ibiene was pregnant for her new husband when the incident happened.
Distressed, she reportedly gave birth prematurely and joined in the search for her daughter.
That was the beginning of her mental illness.
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Ibiene, according to the source, started skipping school to go to Bonny Cool Beach in search of her missing daughter.
She reportedly visited markets and slept there until traders woke her up to go home.
She was said to have slept in a popular Pentecostal church, which she attended at the time, many times, praying for her child’s return.
Her husband, who was a farmer, was said to have done everything to help but all measures were abortive.
“At a time, we had to tie her down because she almost drowned. They sacked her from her school. It was painful. The parents of the kids she cared for couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. We prayed, fasted and did everything. Ibiene’s condition kept getting worse,” Mina (surname withheld), who claimed to be a close friend to Ibiene, told this reporter in a telephone interview.
Mina said it broke her heart every time she went to the village market and people would point her to where Ibiene slept the previous night.
Her hair started to tangle and she became darkened. Mina said she would take Ibiene to her own home, bathe her and she would behave ‘normal’ before leaving to go back to her house across the river.
When next Mina would see her, it would be at another market or at a street corner, where she would have bruises and sores all over her body.
“One time, I saw that she had been beaten badly. They said she stole something and that people did not know she was mad because she spoke proper English. They beat this woman so much that she was bleeding from her nose.
“It was a market woman who knew me that called me to rush to the big market to carry my friend before they kill her,” Mina said.
When Mina got there that day, she said she begged the people to stop, but Ibiene did not keep quiet, as she kept asking them about her daughter.
Good friends
Mina said she became friends with Ibiene when her son, Joffrey, started schooling.
She said the proprietress would come to pick her son up from home and take him to school and Ibiene would bring him back before going to drop off other kids.
“The school did not have a bus then. School buses were not really popular. Ibiene would bring my son to me, give me feedback on how he fared in school and promise to come back to help with his homework.
“We had a maid then, who helped us do those things but Ibiene did not mind coming every day,” Mina added.
Even though Mina said she knew just a few things about Ibiene’s background, she said she considered her a ‘bosom friend’.
When her marriage had a crack, Mina said she told Ibiene everything.
She also claimed to have given her (Ibiene) start-up capital to trade in moin-moin and tapioca, which she sold early in the morning and after 12 noon when she was done with her day’s job.
“We talked about everything. Her daughter was also fond of my son and they spent a lot of time together. So, this whole mental illness thing is something I don’t understand,” she added.
Mina recalled not supporting Ibiene’s decision to get married to her ‘new’ husband.
Since she (Ibiene) was a single mother who had had it rough in previous relationships, Mina said she told Ibiene to concentrate on her life first before thinking of marriage.
Mina also noted that she did not like the man’s ‘face’ when she saw him a few weeks before the marriage.
“No bride price was paid. She just packed her things and went to stay with the man in the bush. That place is too far away from modernisation. Her job was going to suffer. I begged Ibiene but she was bent on doing her will. I didn’t know why. I spoke to a man whom she introduced to me as her uncle and he said they were not really related as such but that he would speak to her.
“Her origin has a lot of holes but I didn’t mind. We were really good friends. She spent nights in my home, even with her mental illness. It was when it became bad that I had to involve the church that searched for her relatives who took her for ‘cleansing’,” Mina said.
She claimed that the two sons Ibiene had for her new husband and the man were nowhere to be found.
While saying that there was a time she was partially cured and went in search of her husband and children, Mina noted that they had left the house and no one seemed to know their whereabouts.
It did not take long before Ibiene reportedly took ill again and returned to the streets, picking up rubbish and sleeping in market stalls.
Burden of cure
The family source who spoke to our reporter alleged that a ‘priest’ in a temple popularly known as Toniero got Ibiene pregnant when she was taken there for treatment.
“We came and saw that our sister was heavy with pregnancy. The so-called priest had impregnated her. She had wounds all over her body and she was tied to a post with other mentally-ill people,” the source said.
On why they did not visit regularly to find out how Ibiene was faring in the temple, the source said, “We dey send money na. We dey send foodstuff.”
Mina, speaking on cure, said she knew that Ibiene was at a temple on the other side of the town, but did not know the exact place despite much effort.
She, however, said someone called her in 2010 to inform her they saw her friend heavily pregnant around the Bonny Health Centre area. When she visited the place, she was no longer there.
After many years, very little is still known about the whereabouts of Ibiene’s three children and the ones she had during her illness.
The family source claimed she was taken to another church where she was allegedly cured.
However, Mina said in 2018, people claimed to have seen Ibiene saddled with a bunch of canes on her head, heavily pregnant again.
When asked about Ibiene’s whereabouts now or that of her children, the family source did not give a response.
Rather, he referred our correspondent to a church in Abalamabie Road, Bonny Island, which reportedly specialised in ‘curing’ mentally-ill people.
When our correspondent called the number of the church pastor, the line rang out.
Text messages sent were also not replied to as of press time.
Meanwhile, some sources in Port Harcourt claimed to know the whereabouts of Ibiene’s first daughter.
They said she worked as a hairdresser in a popular saloon in Port Harcourt, where she lived with her mother.
All efforts to independently verify these claims were abortive as of the time of filing this report.
No one also seemed to know who the father(s) of Ibiene’s children born during her mental illness was or were.
Endangered women
Seeing pregnant mentally-unstable women have become a common sight in many Nigerian cities.
In Lagos, our correspondent sighted at least five women with protruding bellies around various areas on the mainland.
On Tuesday, when our correspondent visited Surulere, after a tip-off that a heavily pregnant mentally-ill woman was roaming the streets, he was shown where she kept what looked like her belongings.
Although this reporter did not find her at the spot she was said to have been, residents said they were shocked to find out she was pregnant.
“She used to stay in front of a school. People said she slept there. I give her money and food sometimes when I see her but she is always on the move.
“It was around March this year when I noticed that she was pregnant. As a mother myself, I know a pregnant woman when I see one,” Mrs Edith Ajisafe, a trader in the area, told our correspondent.
A welder, who refused to give his name, said people would have to look closely to know that the woman was mentally unstable.
“You would see her sit like a regular person. The only thing is that her hair is always unkempt and her clothes are always dirty. You will not know she is unwell.
“She moves from one place to another. She does not have any permanent place, and she is heavily pregnant,” he added.
A user of the popular Nigerian social media platform, Nairaland, raised the alarm on the rate of pregnant mentally-ill women in Delta State.
On reaching out to her, the lady, who gave her name as Mrs Joy Ovieteme, said in her shop in Etiope West, a mentally-unstable woman was heavily pregnant.
On further inquiry, she said some community elders claimed that one of the young men who played football on the neighbouring football field was responsible for the pregnancy.
On confronting the players, Ovieteme said they started pointing accusing fingers at each other.
“One said it was the other one. The other one said it was another one. It was such an embarrassing moment. The woman in question is well advanced in age. She should be in her late 40s if I am correct but these boys had the guts to do that kind of a thing to her. Now, she is pregnant and no one seemed to know who is responsible,” she said.
She, however, stated that a philanthropist in the state had agreed to adopt the child after the woman had given birth.
On the family members of the woman, Ovieteme said, “Nobody seems to know who her family members are. I and other concerned residents asked her, but she said she came from Cross River State. But people who know her said she had been in the area for over nine years, roaming the streets.
“She has no known children. No known husband has come to claim her as well. Some non-governmental organisations came last year and said they wanted to trace her back home but came back with no result. It has not been easy with this woman. Come rain, come sunshine, she is by the dumpsite with this pregnancy. She cannot tell who got her pregnant,” Joy added.
Raped
In May 2015, a 33-year-old man, Stephen Itodo, was arrested and arraigned before an Oshodi Magistrates’ Court for raping a mentally-ill woman.
The incident happened at Alhaji Shehu Close, Oshodi, Lagos.
Itodo reportedly snuck into the room the victim was kept in her father’s compound, where she was receiving treatment from some traditional healers and raped her when her family had gone out.
A neighbour, who suspected Itodo’s moves as he entered the room, went to peep and saw him on top of the lady.
The neighbour raised the alarm and before he could escape, he was apprehended.
But in his statement in court, Itodo denied raping the woman, claiming that she consented before he slept with her.
A relative of the victim, who did not give his name while narrating the incident to a national daily (not PUNCH), said the victim could not put up any resistance because of her condition.
He said if the suspect had admitted and begged, the family could have considered settling without involving the police.
A doctor’s report also confirmed that the suspect actually slept with the victim.
When the charges were read to Itodo, he pleaded not guilty to the act of rape and was granted bail in the sum of N50,000 by Magistrate Akeem Fashola.
He was remanded in the Kirikiri Custodial Centre until he fulfilled his bail conditions.
Four years earlier, one Mr Shaibu Daniel, a 35-year-old farmer, was dragged before a magistrate’s court sitting at Osogbo for impregnating a mad woman.
The lady, Shakirat (surname withheld), was said to be from the Ota-Efun area of the state.
Daniel, a father of three kids, was married to one Mrs Alice, who reportedly travelled six months before the incident.
Facing two counts of assault and having canal knowledge of the victim and impregnating her, the accused claimed not to have known that Shakirat was mentally-ill.
Responding to the charge, Daniel said the lady was ‘always dressed neatly’, adding that she was the one who came to his house.
He also added that the first time he slept with her, he gave her N50, while he gave her N100 the second time, saying the third time, he just gave her food which they both shared.
Like Daniel, in 2017, a 50-year-old man, Sufiyanu Kamala, who is said to be from Saniyar Jino village in Kankara LGA of Katsina State, impregnated a 35-year-old mentally-unstable woman.
He was arrested by the police and charged.
The then Katsina State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Gambo Isah, who confirmed the incident to Saturday PUNCH, said the victim was over 28 weeks gone.
Isah said Kamala lured the mentally-unstable woman into his farmland, where he had a ‘series of carnal knowledge of her’, leading to pregnancy.
“On 8th December, 50 years old Sufiyanu Kamala lured a 25-year-old mentally-ill woman into his farmland. He had multiple carnal knowledge of her and impregnated her,” DSP Isah said
That same year in Warri, Delta State, another mentally-ill woman gave birth one early Monday morning.
Residents were said to have helped her go through the delivery process, cleaned her up and given her food and clothing after childbirth.
People in the community said the victim went into labour that morning after an unidentified man, who might be responsible for the pregnancy, sneaked into the area to have canal knowledge of her but she refused.
Also, in November 2019, in Nembe Ogbolomabiri town, Brass LGA of Bayelsa State, a mentally-ill woman gave birth to a baby boy.
She gave birth at a private hospital provided for her by an NGO that got wind of the news that she was heavily pregnant and was due for labour.
The NGO reportedly took her to the hospital where she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. After many assessments, she was taken to a psychiatric home for treatment.
Most of the fathers of the children birthed by these women are unknown.
Impregnated thrice
It is unbelievable that men in their right minds would sleep with a helpless and mentally-unstable woman, much less thrice.
That was the case of a woman in the nation’s capital, Abuja, who was rescued by an NGO where she lived with three of her children.
The Abuja-based children’s home said the three babies were delivered at different times by the woman.
In an interview, the administrator of the home, Victorian Home for Children, Justina Isaac, said the woman was raped by unknown men or by the same man for more than three years.
The woman was found on the streets of Abuja with pregnancy several months after she developed a neurotic disorder.
Isaac said the home located her to pick up the babies after she delivered the first, second and third time.
She revealed that the woman was abandoned by her family members after she became mentally ill, exposing her to dangers on the streets which eventually led to her getting pregnant thrice.
Two of her babies were brought to the Victorian Home where the reverend sisters adopted them.
The third child has been reportedly taken away by the social welfare office of the nation’s capital.
“The first child is a girl we named Winnie. She is in a boarding school in Gboko, Benue State, and she should be in JSS 2.
“The second is a boy, Winnie’s brother, who is with us and he is attending a primary school.
“Their mother had them when she was mad on the street, so we do not have traces of their paternity or any relative; the two children seem to be of different fathers because they don’t look alike.
“We took them in when they were barely two or three months old because she (mother) had begun pouring hot water on the boy, leaving several scars on him.
“When impregnated for the third time, we could not take the child because the sisters in the convent said we could not keep encouraging her to get pregnant.
“The mentally deranged woman traced her kids to our home. So, whenever she came, we allowed her in and bring them out and they sit around her,” she added.
Eventually, the woman was said to have been run over by a car, leading to her death.
Mental illness in Nigeria
Nigeria, the seventh-largest country in the world, has Africa’s highest caseload of depression and ranks 15th in the world in the frequency of suicide, according to the World Health Organisation.
In 2019, the world body said 50 million people in the country suffered from mental illness, representing one in four Nigerians.
Whereas, there are less than 150 psychiatrists in the country.
WHO estimates that fewer than 10 per cent of mentally ill Nigerians have access to the care they need.
A former President of the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria, Taiwo Obindo, said the number of mentally ill people in the country had risen to 60 million.
Obindo, who is also the Chairman, Faculty of Psychiatry, West African College of Physicians, Nigeria chapter, noted that mental healthcare was in a ‘sorry state’ in the country given that only 10 per cent of the 60 million had access to care.
“We are left with more than 90 per cent who are unable to access care and this group is called the treatment gap for mental illnesses,” Mr Obindo said.
Aljazeera, in a 2019 report, noted that the stark difference between Nigeria’s need for better psychiatric care – and the resources available – is illustrated by the health care gaps at the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, which had a 2018 budget of N133m ($372,000) – but only N13m ($36,000) or less than 10 per cent of that amount was released by the Federal Government.
As a result of financial deficits and other challenges, the hospital so far had lost 25 – roughly half of its resident psychiatrists — over the past four years.
Some left to find work in other countries, some moved to private hospitals, while others simply quit.
The hospital is facing a 22 per cent increase in the number of new patients with different types of mental illnesses.
A 2001 report by Adewale Maja-Pearce, titled, ‘The silence of madness’, stated that only ‘a small minority’ of mentally-ill persons, women inclusive, receive orthodox or ‘Western’ medical attention.
A more significant number is treated by traditional or native healers, especially in rural areas where poverty, ignorance and the absence of even rudimentary healthcare clinics are commonplace.
Many of these native healers are freelance operators; others belong to the Nigerian Association of Medical Herbalists.
These native healers have a widespread reputation for excessive brutality in the treatment of especially difficult patients.
A US psychiatrist who undertook research in the country in the mid-1980s, Mr Henry Williams, spoke with many patients who described ‘chaining and flogging’ as common.
He also observed ‘many patients whose wrists and backs showed scarring and ulceration from alleged manacling and beatings’.
“On a number of occasions, I have myself seen manacled patients being led through the streets by these native healers, but I had never before entered any of their establishments. But neither of the two I visited in Abeokuta, home to West Africa’s most famous neuro-psychiatric hospital, were the dens of horror I had imagined,” the writer noted.
An Orlu, Imo State-based traditional healer, who gave his name as Obioma Healer, told Saturday PUNCH that he would do ‘anything possible to get his patients healed’.
When our correspondent reached out to him, claiming to have someone who was mentally ill, Obioma Healer said this reporter had to pay N30,000 to an account number which he would provide and send the patient to him in his Orlu healing centre.
He added that the rest should be left for him to handle.
On how he intended to heal the patient and whether he had a licence, he said, “Leave it to me, Oga. Bring the person to me. I am a spiritualist and healer. If I handle your person, three months no go reach, una go loose am. E go well sharp sharp. Dem know me for the area.”
The belief in witchcraft as the root cause of insanity is strong in Nigerian society and is related to another superstition that poses great risks to the lives of women lunatics: that impregnating such women is a sure route to riches.
One man claimed he ‘collected’ lunatics ‘as a humanitarian job which I have to render . . . my fellow human beings’.
He also confessed to chaining them by their wrists and ankles for up to a fortnight at a time whenever they got violent.
He, however, complained of the incessant demands from ‘big, big men’ wanting to borrow them for the night.
Only the previous day, this man confessed to a national newspaper (not PUNCH) that ‘a complete gentleman’ offered him ‘big money’ to take ‘one of my mad women’ to a hotel, saying he always turned them down.
He added that he refrained from sleeping with any of them because ‘it is sinful to do that’, but that whenever he felt the urge, he would go to a nearby hotel, ‘cool myself down with two bottles of stout, a stick of cigarette and make love to one of the prostitutes’.
The PUNCH reported a case in 1998, involving a councillor in Owo in Ondo State, who ‘prostrated before the elders for forgiveness’ after confessing to have impregnated a well-known mentally-ill woman in the town known simply as Tola.
His excuse was that the devil pushed him into it when he was drunk, but eyewitnesses claimed to have seen him in his car sleeping with her on more than half a dozen occasions some months previously.
‘Pregnant lunatics roam streets’ was a headline on the cover of one of the editions of the National Concord of 2001 following the sudden appearance of ‘female lunatics’ aged between 18 and 25 [who] roam the streets in search of daily bread’.
An unnamed state Commissioner for Woman Affairs and Social Development Programme, the government department responsible for caring for these women, had opined that ‘it takes two to tango’, and added that ‘if the men . . . in their desperate search for money had not slept with the mentally-ill females, they wouldn’t have been impregnated.’
It is also becoming a trend for some ‘area boys’ to gang-rape a mentally-ill woman on the street, leaving her for dead.
A suspect, who was arrested by the Lagos State Police Command in 2005, said in his statement to the police that he slept with the women because ‘they are easy to get and free of charge’.
Sleeping with mentally-ill women doesn’t give wealth – Spiritualist
A traditionalist, who claimed to serve the moon, stars and water bodies, and gave her name as Doromiri Dorotido, said sleeping with a mentally-unstable woman was a myth many had associated with wealth.
Speaking with our correspondent on Facebook, she said any act which would harm the helpless and people of unsound mind was frowned upon in ‘the realm of the spirit’.
“Some of these native doctors will tell you to make sure you get these women pregnant for them to give you wealth. All those things are false. It does not work. A mentally-unstable woman has ‘dark bodies’ hovering around her already.
“If one is not careful, sleeping with them would even cause a ‘transfer’ of those ‘dark bodies’ to the person in question,” she said.
She, however, noted that some perverts did such things because they could not control their sexual urge.
A traditional worshipper based in Anambra, Ukwu na Nkwu Egbe, said harming mentally unstable women in the name of conducting a ritual was against the ‘rules of the underworld’.
“They should be protected, not destroyed. When I see some of them roaming the streets with pregnancies, I laugh because I know the people who did it are already under a spell. Until they are caught and disgraced, they will not stop,” he added.
According to a psychologist, Mr Usen Essien, any man who sleeps with a mentally-unstable woman ‘needs help’.
He added that apart from the health hazards involved, ‘regular, right-thinking individuals are not supposed to be aroused by the sight of a mentally-ill woman.’
“This may first start as a fetish, just the way people want to sleep with persons with albinism or little persons or persons with autism and other learning disabilities. It is an underlying mental problem.
“These men are perverts who want to try out things with these helpless people that they cannot try with a sane woman. Some use sex enhancers and try bizarre sex styles, including anal sex with these women, and a few, I have come to understand, do it on the instruction of a native doctor. There is no scientific proof that sleeping with a mentally-ill woman brings wealth or good luck. Hard work and perseverance are the two things that bring wealth,” he added.
A United Kingdom-based researcher, Mr Ademuliyi Adediran, said the myth surrounding sleeping with mentally-ill women in Nigeria needed to be broken.
“It is sad that our facilities cannot cater to these people. Some of these healing homes take advantage of these women, get them pregnant and the kids from these unions are sold off at ridiculous prices.
“The government needs to be more proactive. It is difficult because there are many mentally-ill people hidden at home away from the view of the world constantly sexually abused by their supposed caregivers and even family members,” he said.
A lawyer, Mrs Selena Onuoha, said persons caught sleeping with mentally-unstable women risked jail time, depending on the ‘degree’ of the act.
According to the Sexual Offences Act (2003), a person who engages in sexual activity with a person with a mental disorder or causes or incites a person with a mental disorder to engage in sexual activity, can get up to 10 years imprisonment.
She said, “This depends on a number of factors. It is said to be triable only on indictment (if penetration is involved), otherwise, triable either way. A person can get up to life imprisonment (if penetration is involved), otherwise 14 years’ custody.”
Punchng Report.
