Man impregnates daughter | When I complained, he gave me some drugs to take – daughter

Zina with baby

Evil forces are controlling me – father
By CHIOMA IGBOKWE

For 24 years of her life, Zina had believed that her father abandoned her, from birth. When she could not live with the belief any longer, she persuaded her mother to take her home. The older women obliged. Such a reunion, as would be expected, is always emotional. And this one was. But it wasn’t for long. For the father, the emotional encounter turned into amorous craving.

 So, the meeting, which was supposed to be a dream-come-true for the young lady, turned out to be a curse of some abominable type. Shortly after his daughter reunited with him, the father allegedly impregnated her. Zina, now 26 years old, claims to have a ten-month old son whose father is no other person than her own father (names withheld).

 Zina said that her father was the first man to have carnal knowledge of her and that he usually hypnotized her anytime he wanted to make love.

 She narrated her story this way: “I demanded to know my father and also to stay with him so that I could do something better with my life. I thought, when I got to his place, he would fix me into a skilled job. My mother took me to his house in Amuwo Odofin area of Lagos.
 “But when I got there, it was another thing altogether. It all started with his over-monitoring nature. Anytime I went to my place of work, my father would come and check if I was there or if any man came to visit me. I thought it was just this fatherly protective measure for her daughter.
 “Then, one day, he gave me some concoction at night, saying it was for malaria. But after I took it, I did not know where I was and, before I knew it, I slept off and, when I woke up, I discovered I was naked and was bleeding”.

 Asked if she told anybody, Zina replied: “I did not tell anybody that first time because he threatened to send me back to my mother if I did. He continued that way until I became pregnant. Even when I was pregnant, I never knew. It started from being dizzy and when I complained, he gave me some drugs to take, which made my stomach rumble for days. When I could not bear the pain any longer, I had to contact someone who in turn contacted my mother”.

 On arrival, her mother was said to have taken her to hospital where tests were carried out on her and results showed she was six months pregnant. The 39-year-old mother of the girl, Rose Nwogugu, was devastated.

 Zina remained with her father in that state until she gave birth to a male child, who has a striking resemblance with his grandfather. Lack of care for both the nursing mother and her child reportedly prompted Nwogugu, mother of the incest victim, to alert the police who, in turn, arrested the father.
 “What have I done to deserve all this?” Zina’s mother asked Saturday Sun rhetorically. Information showed that the single mother had suffered several misfortunes in life. First was the pregnancy that produced Zina, 26 years ago, when she was barely 13 years. She was reportedly impregnated while in form two. Then, the man responsible (Zina’s father) was a trader in Jos. The pregnancy disrupted her education, as her furious parents refused giving her out in marriage, on the grounds that she must finish her secondary education first.

 Looking back with regret, Nwogugu said: “This man (pointing to the father of her child) has put me into so much trouble. Part of it is that I have not been able to marry since then. He got me impregnated when I knew nothing about life. Even at that , he never bothered to check his daughter. I reluctantly took my daughter to him so that he could at least play his fatherly role. I never knew it would turn out this way. I came to check her when I heard he was not taking care of her only daughter for me to discover that my daughter had been impregnated by her own father”.
 On why he decided to sleep with his daughter in the first place, the suspect blamed it on spiritual forces beyond his control.

 “If I tell you it has got more to do with spiritual forces, you may not believe me. But it is true. This spiritual thing is true. I was cursed by one of my uncles without any fault of mine. He placed a curse on me that I will never do well in life. Since then, anytime I have money at hand, it will just disappear. I have been going from pillar to post all these years, struggling to make ends meet but no way. Look at me, is it proper for a man my age to be unmarried? That is what I am saying. This thing happening to me is not ordinary.”

 On why he chose his daughter instead of a female friend, he said: “I do not have a girl friend. It all started when she started telling people that I am not her father. When her mother brought her to me in 2009, I could not take care of her because I was poor. I could not feed myself, let alone another person. It is not that I never had plans for her but things were tight for me, that I had to take her to my elder sister’s place. But she later brought her back saying my daughter had some problems.

 ”I then got a place at Mile 2 Park where she could be working in a restaurant. While there, she kept telling people that I was not her father. Out of annoyance, I took her away from there and got her another place, yet the case was the same. At a point I begged her to stop denying me before the world but she would not stop. Then I withdrew her from there and made her stay at home with me for four months before I took her to learn fashion designing where she repeated same thing”
 Asked how he got his daughter’s consent in the atrocious act, he said, “It happened one night. I did not tell her anything. I only crept to her and started fondling her. She did not put up any resistance; so I had carnal knowledge of her. This continued until her mother came to inform me she was pregnant. She never told me she was pregnant. I could not also deny it because when the baby was born he looked very much like me.

 “I did not hypnotize her as she claimed. The only concoction I gave to her was for malaria because there are lots of mosquitoes where we lived and I did not want her to suffer from malaria. Her claim that I am the first man in his life is also a big lie. This is because she was not a virgin when I slept with her. I am an adult and I know how it feels like with a virgin.”

 Asked whether he felt any remorse the first time he slept with his daughter, he shook his head and said, “Remorse? No. There was nothing like that. It was just like any other girl”.
 On what he wanted to do with the product of the pregnancy, he remained calm, refusing to talk. Even when he was asked what the name of the child was, he directed this reporter to her daughter.
 Meanwhile, 10-month old Destiny (for that is the child’s name), clung to her mother, crying and struggling to remove her blouse in an attempt to reach her breast. Unknown to this child, an abominable incident capable of permanently stigmatizing him, had occurred.