Son demands payment for mother’s slavery

Daily Sun
From Nwabueze Okonkwo, Onitsha 

Mr. Emmanuel Okeke, one of the two sons of  Mrs. Marthina Okeke, a 67 year-old woman who was trickishly flown to the United States of America (USA), some eighteen years ago, with promises that she would be given a plum job over there, has demanded  immediate payment to her mother all the monies and other benefits accrued to her while serving as a house-help in New York city, United States of America.

He alleged that a gubernatorial aspirant in 2003 from Arondizuogu (names withheld) (Mbadiwe) Imo State approached his widowed mother, Marthina in 1988 and promised to build a house, care for the children’s education and send money for the upkeep of the family only if she would join him to US for a better life.

“My mother because of poverty agreed and they left for US leaving us to our faith.  As a boy of 12 years, second of three children, I did not hear from her for 18 years now. 

He said that while in US, very effort made to hear or see her hit the rock because she was kept incommunicado and she was handicapped to communicate us as she was neither paid nor allowed to mix up for 18 years running”.

Briefing newsmen in Awka, Anambra State capital over the weekend, Okeke said that he was in his house 10 days ago when one Bonaventure Ezekwenna, a US-based human rights activist came in demanding to see him.

On presenting himself as having based in US he listened attentively to his story that he was sent by Okeke’s mother to relate to him that the mother was hail and hearty but has left the foster family on demand for her entitlements 18 years after.

“To buttress his point that he came in good faith, he gave me his handset and I spoke directly to my mother and she asked me about the family.  I told her that Ngozi (daughter) died a hungry girl and that Okey and I were married with children”.

Okeke during the briefing appealed to the Federal Government to come to the rescue of the mother by forcing the politician who he said later found out to be a human trafficker to pay her mother her entitlements for rearing their children for them since she arrived USA, as she must have suffered psychological trauma while in the house of the foster family.

In his contribution, the activist who runs an NGO, Africa in America Foundation, a body that fights human trafficking, said that the woman approached the body with the help of a local journalist in US and he pledged to assist so that she would regain her freedom adding that city of New York Bar Association is working towards her getting T- Visa, while another legal firm also in New York is currently working for her entitlements, adding that if the T-visa works out, she would now become a free citizen of America and have freedom of movement.

The victims of the trafficking he revealed were mostly poverty stricken girls, boys and women and they are lured away from their homes with promises of better life but instead trapped into slave-like situation where they undergo horrendous physical, emotional, financial and sexual abuse and exploitation.

“Victims are often subjected to physical and psychological torture in addition to threat of physical harm to their relatives in their countries of origin.  Effectively trapped, they are forced to work under brutal and inhuman conditions without pay and that is what we are trying to stop by creating awareness”.

Okeke revealed that whenever the politician comes back from US he would be moving about with great number of mobile policemen without telling them the condition of their mother.