SHEKINAT: 11-YEAR-OLD WHO BURIED AUNT’S BABY ALIVE: SHE IS SUFFERING FROM PSYCHO-DYNAMIC TRAUMA

Penultimate Sunday, we published the heart-rending story of Shekinat, 11-year-old girl who buried her aunt‘s baby alive in Aboru, a suburb in Lagos. Though her 18-month old victim, Usnah, survived the four-day ordeal in a soak-away pit in an uncompleted building next to her parents‘ residence, she is still recuperating in the hospital and would need reconstructive surgery to fix her gangrenous ears.

Baby Usnah Badmus might be lucky to be alive after her four-day ordeal in the soak-away pit, but she is still undergoing medical observation at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja.

She is now receiving medical attention at the Burns and Plastic Surgery Ward, and her mother says she might undergo minor surgery, based on what the doctors treating her told her. Usnah‘s mother, Mrs. Barakat Badmus, put it more succinctly, ”The two ears were seriously affected when we pulled her out of the pit on Wednesday, November 17. We took her to the private hospital and she was treated. But when she was discharged on Sunday, November 21, we returned to dress the ears on Monday; it was then we discovered that one of the ears had become gangrenous.
“So, we were advised to take her to LASUTH. We brought her here on Monday (November 22). Three different tests have been done and we are still buying drugs.”
When correspondent visited her on Thursday, Usnah was sleeping, while her mother kept vigil by her bedside.
She explains that she has since returned her 11-year-old troubled niece, Shekinat, to her mother, who also lives here in Lagos. But Shekinat‘s mother, she states, could not come to terms with what came upon her daughter.

however reached out to a psychiatrist and a psychologist who X-rayed what might be responsible for Shekinat‘s deviant behaviour.
The former head of Psychiatric Department, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Osogbo campus, Dr. Adeoye Oyewole, says Shekinat must be suffering from psycho-dynamic trauma. This, he notes, is triggered in an individual, depending mostly on the individual‘s constitution (make up) and the environment where he/she finds himself/herself.
He stresses, “We are all products of our upbringing. That girl must have been abused one way or the other. May be she‘s been made to fetch water or do some other chores late into the night when others were sleeping. Many children who are abused end up being abusers.
“Shekinat must have been exhibiting the built-up anger in her. You could see that she was passed from one guardian to the other; her experiences in those places might not have been palatable.”
Oyewole adds that every individual has an impulse to love or to hate, stressing that it depends on what body constitution and the environment foist on the individual.
While he recommends that Shekinat should be taken to see the psychiatrist who he believes could help her in her current predicament, he rules out the superstitious notion that she could be an Ogbanje or emere (possessed by demon or familiar spirits).
Corroborating Oyewole, Prof. Mopelola Omoegun, educational psychologist at the University of Lagos, agrees that Shekinat‘s behavior is not normal and she recommends that she deserves to be taken to a correctional home.
She explains: “Her behavior is not normal; I believe she has psychological problems. She should be taken to the Lagos State Ministry of Youths, Sports and Social Welfare. They should tell them they are from me; they should be able to help her.”

Meanwhile, the parents of Usnah are still spending money and will not leave the hospital until their daughter fully recovers. Mrs. Badmus says the hospital bill handed them in Yaks Healing Centre, their first place of call, was almost N20,000; and that, less than two weeks at LASUTH, they have also spent over N20,000 on different medical tests and prescription drugs.
“We have spent over N20,000. We have ran three tests, and one of those tests was about N3,100,”she tells our correspondent, waving a Skye Bank teller with which she made the payment.
According to her, Usnah has lost part of her right ear due to the number of days she spent hanging with both ears in the pit. She also states that the left side of her head was badly affected that the flesh had to be scraped off to get rid of the dead cells.
She adds, “The doctor said she requires surgery to cover the area that has been scraped off on the left side of her head. So, we don‘t know when we are leaving here, because the surgery has not been done.”
Most of the explanations by the experts seem to tally with Shekinat‘s life. Having lost her father, she has been moved from one relation‘s place to the other. Before she was brought to Lagos a little over a month ago to live with Mr. and Mrs. Badmus at 19, Pipeline Road, Aboru, she was living with another aunt in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
But the Badmuses denied ever maltreating the girl. ”I never had any cause to maltreat her. In fact, I treated her like my own daughter,” Mrs. Badmus told correspondent.