In 1996, I was just a sprightly ten-year-old finding my way through my second year in high school. School wasn’t exactly a hop, skip, and jump away, it required two bus rides to get there.
One fine morning, while trekking toward Kola bus stop to catch my second bus, I noticed a crowd gathered around a gutter, all craning their necks to see something. Naturally, my curiosity got the better of me.
Now, this gutter wasn’t just any gutter, it was the infamous Kola market gutter. Market women treated it like their personal dumpster, tossing in refuse and, when the coast was clear (read: dark), using it as an open-air restroom. Yep, the stuff of nightmares.
But that morning, the usual horrors took a back seat. Lying there in the muck was a tiny, helpless baby boy, wrapped in a polythene bag, umbilical cord still clinging to him like a tragic keepsake. His little body struggled to breathe, and the sight of him exposed and fighting for life hit me like a ton of bricks. I was heartbroken. My mum was heavily pregnant at the time, and I couldn’t help but think about how much I wanted a sibling while someone else was discarding theirs like yesterday’s trash.
The adults around didn’t help matters, they just gawked, hissed, and muttered about the cruelty of whoever left the baby there before moving on to their day. Being a kid with school to catch, I had no choice but to leave too, but my heart stayed there with that poor child.
That afternoon while heading back from school, curiosity dragged me back to the scene, and what I saw crushed me. The baby had died, his tiny body now a feast for flies. The sight was unbearable.
When I got home, visibly upset, my mum asked what was wrong. Through sobs, I told her about the abandoned baby at Kola market. Without missing a beat, even with her heavy belly, she leapt up, insisting we go back to rescue the child. She was ready to care for him as her own.
I had to break it to her that the baby was already gone. She was furious, fuming at the adults who stood idly by, doing nothing to save that innocent life. She cursed the inaction of the crowd, and for good reason.
A few months later, tragedy struck our home. My mum had a stillbirth, and we lost the sibling I had so desperately longed for. In the months and years that followed, she often revisited the memory of the baby in the gutter, lamenting how she could have saved and loved him as her own, especially now that the one she carried was no more.
Even as she grew older and came to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t have more children, the memory of that baby continued to haunt her. What surprised me even more was that Mum hadn’t even seen the baby with her own eyes. It amazed me how deeply something she only heard about from me could haunt her for so long and with such intensity.
That memory came flooding back to me just a few days ago when I stumbled upon a similar story on Instagram. A baby, tied in a polythene bag, was tossed into a lake and discovered by swimmers. At this age and time, there are options, safe havens, adoption agencies and it doesn’t even cost much to give a child a chance.
If a mother can carry a baby for nine months and go through the miracle of birth, why deny them the right to life?
Every child deserves a chance to live. Every single one.
Born as Titilayo Oladimeji, I have been known by the nickname Titipetral for nearly two decades. I am a Financial Advisor at a reputable financial institution in Lagos, Nigeria, with over 10 years of experience in Financial Advisory and Credit Analysis. I am also an author and the founder of Titipetral Publishers, a duly registered publishing company.
In addition, I lead the Titipetral Empowerment and Development Network (TEDN), a duly registered philanthropic initiative dedicated to supporting underprivileged girls, boys, women, and men in the Alimosho area, Nigeria’s most populated local government, focusing on serving the underserved.
For inquiries or collaboration, you can reach me at Titilayooladimeji@titipetral.com or titipetral@gmail.com.