Woman Recounts How Dad Has Been Using Her to Make Money

27-year-old Funke Gbadebo’s father, Najeem Gbadebo, has allegedly been contracting her out as a maid and collecting her entitlements upfront without giving her a dime. Funke told The Nation:

“I was 18 when my father said one of his cousins volunteered to cater for my well-being. Few months after I got there, I got to know they were not related to my father in any way and that I was hired as a maid.

I was in SS2 when I dropped out of school and since then, I have been working for my father. I worked as a maid for five years and when I asked for my pay, I was told my father collected my allowance for the years I spent.

Combining hairdressing training wasn’t easy because I woke up at 4am daily to take care of my bosses’ children and sometimes they called in between to send me on errands. It got to a point I felt there was no progress in my life so I left and returned to my father. I had nothing on me when I returned to him. Even the N50,000 my boss gave me when she knew I wasn’t aware of my father’s plans, he collected it from me…

With the money I saved from the factory, I bought few things I could use for hairdressing business. When I got home, my dad accused me of buying it saying that he was meant to spend my first salary.

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He didn’t allow me to start the hairdressing business. He took me to a woman who sells fabrics on Lagos Island where I worked for two and-a-half years. She agreed to pay me N15,000 monthly. When I was about to leave last December, she said she wasn’t owing me adding that my father collected my allowance for the years I spent.

When I returned home two weeks ago to ask the reason for his actions, he and his wife beat me mercilessly and sent me out of their house around 12am without anything. My stepmother keeps saying I am HIV positive and it is because of the stress I have been going through. I slept in uncompleted buildings for weeks before I was saved by a Good Samaritan who knew me when I was working as a maid in Agege.

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My father keeps using me. He says I am bad omen. He has not done anything for me. He said he cannot empower me and that I should just bring a man I want to marry. That is not what I need now; I want to cater for myself and not be a beggar like my father.

I know my mother is alive but I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know the reason she left my brother and I. My younger brother ran away when he was 15 because my father kept maltreating him. I learnt my mother lives in Iperu, Ogun State but I haven’t gone to look for her. My father is an house agent and a trado-medical practitioner. He lives in Magboro. I just want him to empower me but he is not ready. Since they sent me out of the house, they haven’t searched for me.”

Her father refused to react to her allegations, telling off the reporter who called him on phone. The Rural and Urban Development Initiative (RUDI) has however taken up the case.