Abducted girl, Patience reunites with family in Sokoto

Fifteen-year-old Patience Paul, who was abducted in Sokoto in August 2015 and taken to Bauchi State has been reunited with her family members.

Addressing a press conference in Kaduna yesterday, an official of a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Voice for the Girl’s Child Foundation (VGCF) in Jos, Plateau State, Ezekiel Dyagas, said he was briefed about Patience’s case by her brother on March 1, 2016.

According to him: “Her brother who is here with me has been helpful since the family realised that the little girl was missing and eventually abducted by one of their neighbours.”

Dyagas said: “I told the family to give me 48 hours, we would be able to retrace her whereabouts. I posted her story on the website and you will not believe the response I got. Within that 48 hours I was talking to the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, and I told the girl’s brother that the governor will call him.”

He added that: “The governor played a vital role in the freedom of Patience. Those behind the abduction in Sokoto had been arrested and will be prosecuted soon.”

Speaking on her ordeal, Patience told journalists that she is not familiar with her abductor but do see him around the neighbourhood.

She, however, disclosed that she was not forced into marriage but that her abductor turned her into a sex slave.

When contacted, the spokesman to Governor Tambuwal, Mallam Imam Imam, denied the claim that it was a case of abduction, saying, “the girl left her house to live with her mate from where she goes to school every day.”

Imam also refuted the report that Patience was taken to Bauchi for forceful marriage, saying that, “findings by the state government revealed that the little girl was in Sokoto throughout her ordeal and claimed that she left home because she was being maltreated.”