Six-year-old boy survives knife-stab Injuries by his Mother.

Six-year-old Promise Eboye, should not be alive, at least going by the four gory
looking stab injuries on his back. The boy survived an attack that would have killed even an adult had the injuries been sustained in vital parts of the body.
Promise, a bright and sharp boy lives with his mother and step-father in
Kollington area of Ijaiye, Lagos, while his biological father lives in Benin, Edo
State.
At about 8am on Monday, Promise’s mother, Comfort, stabbed her son four
times, inflicting life-threatening injuries on the boy’s body.

The broken bottle the woman used on her son tore into the boy’s flesh inflicting
one three-inch injury and another two-inch injury on the boy’s back. Two other
wounds looked equally horrific but were not as long and deep as the other two.
Neighbours said if Promise had not run away from his mother, who held tight
to his wrist and stabbed him as he screamed, he would have been stabbed to
death.

Promise, who seems to have a remarkable memory, told Saturday PUNCH that
his mother has a “N30 cane”, which she uses to flog him, even when he had no
idea what he had done wrong. He said she would sometimes beat him till he
could not walk.

“My mother is wicked,” Promise said simply, quietly. As shocking as that
sounded, coming from a six-year-old, it explained the kind of treatment the boy
had been experiencing in the hands of his mother.
Promise said he had been living with his father in Edo State since he was one
year old. But when he was five, his mother came to take him from his father’s
house.

The boy said, “I was sweeping the day she came. I did not know her as my
mother. My father then told me that she was my mother and she had come to
take me to Lagos.
“When we came to Lagos, I started to live with her and my step-father. But she
beat me all the time.”
Asked what happened on Monday to make his mother stab him, Promise said
he tripped and fell.
He said, “When I fell, my mother asked me what pushed me and why I fell. She
was angry and went to take her N30 cane. When she was beating me too much
and I was screaming, one of our neighbours came to hold her hand to take the
cane away from her. The woman said I should run away because my mother
would kill me the way she was beating me.

“My mother said ‘I will kill you, I will kill you’. When she could not find anything
else to beat me with, she took a broken bottle on the ground and started to
stab me on the back.”
Promise was rescued by alarmed residents, who took him to a private hospital
nearby.
But by the time the boy was taken to the hospital, Comfort had planted another
story in the boy’s head.
Pastor Charles Agboola, a pharmacist who founded the hospital, said the two
people who brought Promise in said the boy fell down and landed on a broken
bottle. When Agboola’s wife, a nurse, asked the boy what actually happened,
Promise told her that he was watching two people fight when he sustained the
injury.

The nurse told our correspondent, “He told me that they pushed him and he
landed on the broken bottles but when I informed my husband, he said
immediately that the story could not be true. I also noticed that the wounds
were not consistent with that story.
“It was shocking that the boy’s mother was not remorseful in any way. It was
when she dashed out of the door under the pretence that she was going to look
for money for the boy’s treatment, that a crowd from their street, who were
coming to the hospital ,grabbed her and told the true story of what happened.
“When we asked Promise why he lied, he said his mother had told him what to
say when asked how he sustained the injury.”

Mr. Agboola told Saturday PUNCH that by the time the boy was about to leave
the clinic, he was crying.
“He said he did not want to go back home. We fed him, gave him any kind of
food he wanted because I could not leave the boy to suffer even though nobody
paid us any money for his treatment. We even prayed for him. Anytime we
brought up the issue of who would take over his care when he was released
from our hospital, he became very sad,” the pharmacist said.
Neighbours told our correspondent that Comfort sometimes punished the boy by
smashing his head against a wall whenever he did something wrong.
Comfort was later handed over to the police at Ijaiye-Ojokoro Division.
Comfort, who is nursing a toddler, said Promise stepped on her baby, which was
why she became angry.

When Promise’s biological father was later contacted, he initially said he
wanted nothing to do with the issue.
“I have other children – I have produced boys and girls. Whatever she likes, she
should do with her son. When she likes, she would take the boy to a motor park
and send him to me through a driver,” the man said.
Later when he was told that his ex-wife was in police custody, he said he
would come to Lagos to pick the boy.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Kenneth Nwosu, said Comfort would be
arraigned as soon as possible.
He explained that Promise had been treated and discharged from hospital. As of
the time of filing this report, Promise was being housed at the Lagos State
social welfare home.
Later on Thursday, Comfort was arraigned at an Ojokoro Magistrate Court,
Lagos on charges of assault occasioning harm and attempted murder.
Promise’s father also came to Lagos on Thursday to take the boy. The father
declined to speak on the issue when our correspondent tried to ask him some
questions. “I only came to Lagos to pick the boy,” he said.