Police are looking to arrest a group of men who were accused of beating a
father to near death for refusing to hand over his daughter for a
female genital mutilation procedure, according to Nigeria police.
According Olalekan who spoke out in hiding, his people had mandated on him and his wife to present their daughter for circumcision, with the understanding that it would curb infidelity in the future but when he and his wife refused to hand over their daughter to be subjected to the painful and needless circumcision, they became marked people.
While his wife managed to escape with the children, Olalekan was not so lucky as he was captured while attempting to run away and beaten to a pulp and left for dead but he managed to stay alive and escaped later.
Olalekan recalled of the beating he got from his kinsmen:
“I thought I had died. I was bleeding all over my body with swollen face and cuts on my body. What I experienced from them is not what I wish anybody. If it were my wife or children, they may not have survived it.”
“I was on my way home when some men began taunting me for not allowing my daughter to be circumcised, rather aided their disappearance.
Before I knew it, they had pounced on me and beaten me to a pulp. It is God that kept me alive after the beating I got.”