A depressed 63-year-old farmer living in Modakeke, Osun State, Yemisi Akintunde, said she has been unable to see her daughter since the Department of State Security (DSS) arrested her, along with her fiancé, in late 2024.
Akintunde disclosed this during a Sunday interview with The Punch, where she detailed how some DSS officers barged into her house after arresting Kehinde Akintunde, her 28-year-old daughter, and Nurudeen Adesiyan, the fiancé on November 29.
The DSS arrested them in Ajape, her daughter’s mother-in-law’s place. Akintunde said the officers “just disappeared” with Kehinde and Nurudeen, claiming that they were arrested in connection to a Moroccan terrorist.
“My child does not cause trouble, and she does not fight. I am begging the government to have mercy on me; I only have two female children, and now they have taken one away from me,” said the mother.
She disclosed that she woke up in shock when the officers arrived at her house early in the morning following the arrest.
“They hit our door several times, and we had to open it. They beat up the two children inside the house,” she said.
“They asked them where their sister, Kehinde, was. I told them she slept at her fiancé’s house at Ajape. Before we opened the door, I had to call my son (Kehinde’s elder brother) and the children with me to come because the security personnel said we were under attack at the house.”
Akintunde said the security officers, who came in four vehicles, were armed with guns. They were numbered at least 12.
“They collected all our phones, moved us inside one of the vehicles and drove us to the community school. It was when we got to the school that I realised that Kehinde and her fiancé, Nurudeen, alongside their mother(-in-law), had also been taken. But they returned our phones and asked us to go back home from school,” she said.
The middle-aged farmer said when she demanded to know why the officers had freed them all except the duo of her daughter and her fiancé, they told her not to kill herself.
Ever since the arrest, she said, the whereabouts of the couple remain unknown. The family has searched for them at various police stations but found no trace of them.
The aggrieved mother said they had dialled their numbers several times but got no response.
“We have not heard anything about our children; we have not seen them. We have gone everywhere, including police stations; we didn’t hear anything about their whereabouts,” Akintunde said.
“At least if I speak with them, I will know they are still alive.”
She said the families got confusing reports, with the police unable to identify the officers who carried out the arrest.
“They said they didn’t know the people who came to arrest them. I have not experienced this kind of situation before,” she added.
“We don’t know what they did. They should please have mercy on us because both of them don’t have fathers again.
“There is none of my children who I cannot vouch for. Since their father died 20 years ago, I have known them very closely. I know what they can do and what they cannot.”
Credit: Fij.ng
