Musa and the evil stepmothers

The tragic picture of the 20 -month-old  Musa whose hands and legs were broken by his stepmothers is enough to touch a heart of stone and bring tears to the eyes. The picture was of the little boy on his hospital bed at the Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital. In a  report last week in Daily […]

The tragic picture of the 20 -month-old  Musa whose hands and legs were broken by his stepmothers is enough to touch a heart of stone and bring tears to the eyes.
The picture was of the little boy on his hospital bed at the Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital.
In a  report last week in Daily Trust which actually sounds like something from a horror movie, two  stepmothers in Rimin Gado Local Government Area of Kano State have been arrested by the police for allegedly breaking their 20-month-old stepson’s legs and hands as well as causing injuries to his tongue and private part.
According to the story, the boy’s mother was divorced from the father and when she was about to re-marry , the father insisted and  took the boy from her to live with him and given to his two wives to raise him.
Musa’s mother Bilkisu Osama said, “I gave him back his son but 28 days after, he came to inform us that the child was ill. When my aunty went to see him, she found his ears oozing out blood and she rushed him to the hospital for medication after which he was further taken back to the father’s house. Again, the next day, we were further informed that the child’s eyes were also affected and on reaching there, it looked like the eyes were pierced with a sharp object. Thus continued the mutilation because after that, it was both his two legs and two hands that were fractured.”
This is a classic case of muscle flexing by men to take away children from their mothers in the case of divorce, particularly if the ex-wife is getting married.
Some would say that their children would not go and live in another man’s house, and even if the ex-wife does not intend to go with the child, but to leave him with her mother or sister, the men still out of malice to hurt them would go to any length to take away small children.
And in a lot of cases the men make this drastic decision without having made arrangement on how to care for the children.
Besides, in Islam a child should be left with his mother until he reaches seven years in the case of boys. At least at this age a child would be able to do simple personal things like feeding himself and taking bath. And in the case of girls, they should stay with their mother until they get married.
But as everybody knows the ideal is far from the reality, and there are many toddlers living like orphans in their fathers’ houses with nobody to make them feel loved.
I think that it is cruel to take Musa away from his mother and the people he loves to bring him to people he may see as strangers, and then expect him to be happy. For one, a small child like him needs his mother’s warmth. He needs her to cuddle him, feed him, laugh with him and above all, her closeness when he sleeps in the night.
I can’t even begin to imagine how and where he slept after his father took him away. Who would rock him back to sleep when he wakes in the middle of the night or give him water to drink?
As for the women, what they did was inexcusable, baffled people keep asking, “What has he done to them?” But what could he have done to deserve such an extreme form of ‘punishment?
But as far as I am concerned , Musa’s father should also be arrested, after all he was the  chief culprit that took away a child little more than a baby from his mother, which in my view is also a big offence.
Some men hardly take interest in their children whose mothers have died or are divorced. They just assume that their wives would naturally take care of the children. But  if they pay  special attention to the children and draw them closer to them, such wicked wives may be afraid of maltreating the children.
However in some cases, some women  may on their own decide to take a small child to his father, believing that they would hurt their former husbands by saddling them with small children. By their rage, they disregard what may befall their children.
The public is keenly waiting to see that these women are prosecuted accordingly, so that other evil-minded stepmothers and other guardians should think twice before they maltreat any child.