twelve-year-old Mary Okon was washing a heap of dirty clothes when she sighted her refugee father some 100 metres away. She abandoned the laundry and welcomed her father with a warm embrace. Mary was seeing her father for the first time in the New Year. For two consecutive years running, Mary, a Junior Secondary School drop-out, had not spent the Yuletide with her immediate family. Mary’s parents, Okon and Christiana Mary’s father, Okon, had literally sold her into servitude after using the young girl as collateral to secure a N600,000 loan from a contractor with the Calabar Urban Development Agency, Mr. Asuquo Etim. Okon, a Bakassi refugee, secured the loan from Etim in installments in 2013, with a view to saving the life of his first daughter, Blessing, who was diagnosed with blood cancer.
Blessing, however, died of cancer in September 2013, despite efforts made to sustain her life.
Still in the warm embrace of her father, it took the young girl some time before she recognised the presence of this correspondent during a visit to Etim’s residence on 6, Orok Effiom Street, off Atimbo Road, Calabar, Cross River State.
FATHER USES GIRL CHILD FOR COLLATERAL