Woman Allegedly Beats 10 Year Old Housemaid To Death In Ikorodu

A middle-aged woman identified as Linda Alapa, has been arrested by the police in Lagos State for allegedly beating her 10-year-old housemaid, Joy Mbafan, to death. Mbafan lived with the suspect on Bolanle Oduniyi Street, Okegbegun, in the Ikorodu area of the state.

Punch reports that Alapa was flogging the girl over a minor incident around 3am last Monday when she passed out and was later confirmed dead.

Speaking from the Ikorodu General Hospital morgue where Alapa had gone to deposit Mbafan’s corpse, a doctor on duty was said to have noticed marks of violence on the body of the deceased and alerted the police at the Sagamu Road Division.

According to a police, upon interrogation Alapa confessed to beating the girl.

”She wanted to absolve herself of the death of the victim, but for the doctor on duty who raised the alarm after a close examination and she was arrested. There are marks of violence on the body of the deceased and she did not deny beating her.”

Still on the matter, Alapa’s neighbours said they had warned her many times to desist from assaulting the victim but to no avail. One of the neighbours of the suspect said Alapa did not only beat the girl but also starved her of food.

The woman, who gave her name only as Ellen, said although she did not know what led to the beating on that day, “she usually beat the girl for messing up their apartment.”

”Around 3am on the day the girl died, I heard her crying as the woman (Alapa) flogged her. I woke up my husband to intervene. He said he was tired of the woman’s insults. After a while, she stopped crying.

It was when I came back from work that afternoon that I saw a crowd on our premises in tears. They said Joy (Mbafan) was dead. The woman’s husband was not at home that day. It was the landlord that told him about the incident on the telephone.”

Another resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the girl’s father was late while her mother was ill, adding that Alapa had brought her to Lagos from a village in the eastern part of Nigeria.

”But she used to beat up and starve the girl of food. On several occasions, the girl would come to me to eat, saying her Aunty did not give her food.”
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Lamenting Mbafan’s death, a trader in the area, who identified herself only as Deborah, said that she had urged the suspect to counsel Mbafan rather than apply corporal punishment.

”She made that little girl to lose self-confidence. Her body bore marks of lashes. Now that the girl is dead, she should also face the music,” Deborah said.

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Dolapo Badmos, confirmed the case, adding that the suspect is under investigation while the corpse has been deposited in a morgue for autopsy.

Photo credit: Getty Images