‘Fatherless’ children share emotional stories of loneliness

Though he laughs and plays around with
other kids in the neighbourhood, deep down within, he is hurt. When he
sees other children being pecked by their fathers, he sometimes breaks
into tears silently. He later disclosed the reason for this behaviour –
he misses his father.

Oluwadamilare Okunade is 10 years old,
but for the most part of his life, he does not know his father. Two
years after he was born in 2004, his mother died after a prolonged
illness which arose due to some complications after his birth. A day
after his mother died, his father left him in the care of his mother’s
relatives and never returned to have a glimpse of how his son was
faring. Up till today, none of Oluwadamilare’s aunts and uncles seems to
know the whereabouts of his father. He is long gone.

Since then, the young lad has been
living with his grandmother in Ede, Osun State, while his uncles and
aunts cater for his welfare and schooling. However, the absence of
paternal care is affecting the 10-year-old emotionally.

Sometimes when he goes to school and
sees other kids being brought in their fathers’ cars, and they wave
their fathers goodbye, he wishes his father was around too to show him
same love. When the school authorities give the pupils letters and ask
them to invite either of their parents to the Parents-Teachers
Association meeting or the annual end of the academic year get-together,
he does not know who to give his own letter to. Though he knows his
mother is dead, he wishes his father was at least around to represent
him at such functions. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

When other kids run to their parents
after each church service on Sundays, he runs to meet with his
grandmother, who currently plays both roles of a father and mother in
his life. His grandmother, who would not want her name disclosed, told
our correspondent she had been trying so hard to take good care of him
because “he is now my last born.”

She added, “I am very jealous over him.
Anyone who tries to hurt him must hurt me first. He is the apple of my
eyes. It was unfortunate that my daughter who gave birth to him died at a
young age and left Oluwadamilare with me at a tender age, yet I believe
God knows why he let it happen.

“I know he will do very well in life and
bring much joy into my heart. I am waiting for that day. I still pray
that wherever his father is, he will come back for him someday. He just
left and we never heard anything about him again. Up till now, I don’t
know what might have caused his disappearance. But I keep praying that
he will return to see how quickly his then two-year-old son has grown.”

Oluwadamilare could only utter few words
to our correspondent, but he said even though he misses his parents, he
would not allow the death of his mother and the disappearance of his
father to ruin his ambitions in life. He said he was determined to be
the best he could be. He said he wanted to become successful and take
care of his grandmother at old age.

And to achieve these, he said he would
like to become a footballer someday because he loves the game. His
grandmother does not always argue with the boy on this because “he can
be whatever he wants to be; I just want him to be successful in life,
that’s all.”

Oluwadamilare, who is now in Junior
Secondary School 2 at a boarding school in Osun State, said, “I miss my
father and my mother and wish to see them one day. When I see my mates
playing with their fathers, I wish my father was around too.

“Nobody knows what goes on within me,
but I will keep praying for my father to come home someday because I
want to see him. I will not let this affect my life. My aunts and
grandmother always encourage me to become the best. They take care of
me.

“I love watching and playing football
and I want to become a football player someday. I want to be like Lionel
Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and many other players. I am a Manchester
United fan and I know I can achieve my dream when the time comes.”

Left in the care of their mother alone

Toheeb and Basit are children of the
same parents, but live with only their mother. Their father is not dead,
neither has he disappeared, but his lust for another woman is what has
caused the boys’ mother and them to be separated from him.

Toheeb, 12, and Basit, eight, could not tell Saturday PUNCH
when last they saw their father and each time they ask their mother
where he is, she simply tells them not to worry about it, assuring them
that he will come back home someday. Whether her expression of hope will
yield result someday, she could not tell. But the boys seem not to be
fooled – they had long stopped believing her.

The older boy, Toheeb, said, “We long
after our father; we don’t know where he is. Our mum always promises us
that our father will come home soon, but she is lying. She has always
promised and failed. She said we would go and spend the holiday with him
last year, but it was not so.

“She also keeps promising us that she
will bring him home one day and that he will buy many gifts for us when
he comes, but that is not so. We have also asked her where he is and she
told us that he has travelled out of the country. We don’t believe
that. Please help us tell mummy to stop lying to us. We want to see our
father.”

Basit is on the same page with his
brother on this issue. “When I play with my friends in the school, they
tell me some of the things that their fathers usually buy for them, but I
don’t have a father to buy anything for my brother and me.

“My friends also tell me that their
fathers promise to take them on vacation after we finish the term, but
there is no one to take us anywhere. When I ask mummy for our daddy, she
tells me he has travelled. I want to travel and meet him there so that
he can buy many things for me.”

The single mother told Saturday PUNCH
why she had kept lying to her children about the whereabouts of their
father. But she said that despite the absence of their father, she had
taken the bull by the horn to provide for her sons; she is also not
interested in attracting undue pity because she’s a single mother.

She said, “It is a long story, but I
will not share everything with you. When I met their father in 2001, he
was everything to me; he was a businessman and he showered me with much
love that I got myself lost in his love. Eventually, we married that
same year and the following year, I gave birth to Toheeb. Four years
after, my second son was born. After Basit was born, I noticed a few
changes in him.

“Suddenly, he would not eat what I
cooked. He would not want to go out with me to functions; he no longer
craved for sex from me as he used to, and some other attitudinal changes
that I cannot disclose to you. That was when I knew something was wrong
with our marriage, but I could not tell what I did wrong. In fact, as I
am telling you, I still don’t know.

“When I observed all these, I had to
tell his parents and mine who intervened. I later heard that he said he
had found another woman to marry, that he never liked me in the first
place. I learnt that the other woman was his long time school friend
with whom he had a relationship in their university days. I would not
want to say everything that happened, but the summary of everything is
that they are both living together in either Port Harcourt or Abuja; I
cannot really say.”

The boys’ mother said they eventually
divorced since she could not bear the pain of knowing that her husband
never loved her. She felt bitter to learn that she was just used as a
‘substitute’ until he met his real lover.

She added, “So tell me how a mother can
tell her children that their father is married to another woman. How can
you possibly explain that to them? Maybe when they grow up, then they
can understand such life issues. Even though he calls once in a while to
ask about them, he does not support in any way.

“I have accepted my fate and I have
vowed that I will give them the best that I can afford. I cannot say it
has been easy providing for them, they are my jewels who probably need
no father to succeed in life.”

Lost in an accident

When the Adekunles were travelling in
their car together with their then five-month-old daughter, Biola, to
spend the Christmas and New Year holidays with their parents in Osun
State in 2005, little did they know that death was lurking in the road
for the only man in the car.

Mr. Adekunle was behind the wheel and
was driving at high speed when one of the tyres burst. Out of confusion,
he swerved from the road to avoid collision with other cars and ran
into a deep pit by the roadside. The result was the shattering of the
car windscreens and the body. Blood gushed out of the forehead of the
40-year-old driver and few hours after being rushed to a nearby
hospital, he died.

But the wife and Biola, now nine,
survived the accident. Since then, it has been a state of loneliness for
both mother and child, especially for Biola who has never experienced
what a fatherly care is.

Mrs. Adekunle said, “Anytime I see her, I
remember the day her father waved goodbye to us. We were actually going
to my husband’s parents in Ile-Ife just for them to see their
granddaughter because they could not attend her naming ceremony.

“But it happened that our mission was
not accomplished. Biola is going to be a strong lady because I pray for
her every day. She is the reason for my happiness and even though she
asks for her father sometimes, I tell her to calm down because God is in
control.

“Before, she used to see her father’s
portrait in the living room and bedroom, but I have removed them to
avoid her asking me all the heart-aching questions again until she grows
up. She definitely misses the paternal touch, and at times, I feel
weary of telling her everything will be all right when I know it is not
going to be.”

The rate of ‘fatherlessness’ alarming

An Ibadan-based marriage counsellor and
relationship expert, Mrs. Bosede Adepeju, has identified divorce as the
largest factor responsible for ‘fatherlessness’ in Nigeria.

She said that more than half of Nigerian
children will have no ‘fathers’ before they clock 10 years old if the
rate of divorce in the country does not drop. She also said there is no
doubt that children who have both parents have the tendency to be more
disciplined and focused than those who do not have.

She said, “The rate of divorce is
alarming these days, especially between couples who are yet to clock
five years in marriage, and the truth is that many children who are
victims of the act are only left in the care of their mothers. Not many
divorced fathers take responsibility for their children. Almost everyone
agrees when it happens that the mother should be the custodian of the
children.

“By this singular factor, many more
Nigerian children will have no fathers by the time they clock 10. Many
couples are not ready to work out their marriage and you will discover
that they are just few years old in marriage, the maximum being 15.
Nobody hears of couples who have spent above that period in marriage
divorcing themselves because once you can sleep with someone for 15
years, you can as well live with them forever.”

Paternal care and children’s behaviour

A professor of psychology, University of
Lagos, Nigeria, Makanju Ayobami, said there is no way a child will not
be affected psychologically if he misses fatherly care, though “that
does not necessarily mean that if a child has no father, he will not do
well.”

He said that if a child does not have a
father but has someone he can look up to as a father – someone who acts
like a father to him – then such a child may grow up without missing the
‘loss’ of his real father.

He said, “A child’s behaviour based on
the absence of a father depends on many factors. It depends on the way
the child grows up. If he grows up without missing the father (some
children actually do) probably because he has a father figure, that is,
someone who he looks up to and who acts like a father to him, he may not
miss much. However, if there is no father figure and the child only
stays with his mother, there is no way he will not miss his father.

“There should be the two parents in the
home to take care of the children. In all ramifications, if a child
misses the contribution of a father in his life, it could affect him in
terms of behavioural development, especially the ones that could have
been derived if the father was around. This could affect, among other
things, the lifestyle of the child, and in a worst case scenario, can
lead to the delinquency nature of such children.

“It could lead to inappropriate
behaviour in certain circumstances. It could affect their performance in
school, especially when the child really misses his father or father
figure. From all indications, it is wrong to say that if a child does
not have a father, he will not do well; no. If another person plays the
fatherly role, he may not miss much and can perform very adequately in
the society.”

Ayobami’s opinions are similar to a
study carried out by researchers at the University of Melbourne,
Australia – who found out that the presence of fathers – even
uncommunicative ones – raises the levels of positive outcomes for
children.

In 2011, researchers at the University
of Melbourne, Australia found out that delinquent behaviour was reduced
by 7.6 per cent among boys who lived with their biological fathers, and 5
per cent points for those living with non-biological fathers only,
especially violent and gang-related crime.

Likewise, researchers at the Research
Institute of the McGill University Health Centre have proved that
growing up without a father not only affects behaviour, but also
transforms children’s brain structure. The verdict was recently
published in a journal titled Cerebral Cortex.

Researchers studied the behaviour and
brains of Californian mice who, like humans, are monogamous and raise
their children as a unit.

Mice separated from their fathers showed
greater aggression, anti-social behaviour and “abnormal social
interactions” than those raised with both parents.

“The behavioural deficits we observed
are consistent with human studies of children raised without a father,”
said the report’s lead author, Dr. Gabriella Gobbi.

However, more groundbreaking was their
finding that the behaviour was not the only thing affected by the lack
of a father. Mice raised by one parent had a misshapen prefrontal
cortex, the portion of the brain associated with behaviour,
decision-making, and problem solving.

“This is the first time research
findings have shown that paternal deprivation during development affects
the neurobiology of the offspring,” Gobbi said.

The report stated, “Our results
emphasise the importance of the father during critical
neuro-developmental periods, and that father’s absence induces
impairments in social behaviour that persist to adulthood.”

Like Nigeria, like the rest of the world

In Britain already, half of all children
in the country are living in a single-parent home. In fact, more than
one million British children have no fathers, according to a report
published by the Centre for Social Justice. The same scenario also plays
out in the United States. According to the country’s National Centre
for Fathering, more than 24 million children live in a home without the
physical presence of a father; millions more have fathers who are
physically present, but emotionally absent.

The centre went ahead to say that if it
were classified as a disease, fatherlessness would be an epidemic worthy
of attention as a national emergency.

“The impact of fatherlessness can be
seen in our homes, schools, hospitals and prisons. In short,
fatherlessness is associated with almost every societal ill facing our
country’s children,” it said.

Most researches in the country also
focus on two major causes for the growth in ‘fatherlessness’ since the
early 1960’s: divorce and out-of-wedlock births.

The country’s Centre for Health
Statistics said that a number of divorced adults in 2008 was 8,444,000
compared to 393,000 in 1960 and that 50 per cent of all the children
born to married parents today will experience the divorce of their
parents before they are 18 years old.

It also stated that 40.6 per cent of all
newborns in 2008 were born to unmarried parents, a total of 1,727,950
children, the highest ever reported — up from 224,300 in 1960; and that
nearly one in two children in single-mother homes live with mothers who
have never been married. Four decades ago, that figure was one in
sixteen, one-seventh of today’s figure.

Insecurity and fatherlessness in Nigeria

Ever since the Boko Haram insurgency
started in Nigeria, thousands of children have lost their fathers. For
instance, at a camp for displaced people in Yola, survivors of recent
attacks in Adamawa State were scarred by what they had witnessed.

“When Boko Haram attacked Madagali, they
rounded us up and then shot my father,” said a 19-year-old girl,
Rejoice, who was freed and subsequently spent weeks on the run, hiding
in the bush and crossing rivers.

“I could hardly eat because of what I
saw and even now in the camp, I don’t feel like eating food,” the
traumatised teenager said, now alone with no relatives.

There are also many other children like
Rejoice who have lost contact with their fathers, as well as mothers, in
a camp containing over 4,000 displaced persons, BBC reported.

A priest in Yola, Rev. Fr. Gideon
Obasogie, told our correspondent that there were thousands of children
who would never see their fathers again as they had lost their lives due
to the insurgency.

“When I see these children, I weep. Even
if this insurgency fades away, as we hope it will, these children will
forever feel the loss of their fathers. We do go to the camps to give
them relief materials and console them, but I know that no amount of
consolation will bring their fathers back,” Obasogie said.