The parents of a nine-year-old girl named Patience, who vanished from Rotras Crescent in the Merian neighborhood of Lagos State approximately eight days ago, are asking for assistance in figuring out where the young girl is.
It was learned that on March 31, 2024, the young girl had gone outside to give back a food warmer to a neighbor who lives a short distance away from the guardians’ home.
In a phone interview with our correspondent on Monday, one of the guardians, simply known as Pastor Olabiyi, stated that they had looked throughout the entire community and had enlisted the assistance of other neighbors in an attempt to locate the minor, but they had been unsuccessful.
He mentioned that Patience was still missing eight days after the girl went missing, even though he had reported the case to the police.Olabiyi stated, “On March 31, 2024, she vanished.”
She said as she was leaving that she was going to give a warmer flask back to a pastor couple whose house is directly across from ours.In honor of a birthday that was observed on Sunday following church, they sent us the food warmer on Sunday.
However, we found out that she expressed her desire to have the food warmer returned to the people nearby. However, the people became agitated about her whereabouts when she failed to return after thirty minutes.
“We adopted her as our child even though she is not our biological child. She was traveling to my wife’s shop after school. Later that day, the pastor couple came back, and my wife asked them if they had seen Patience. However, they claimed not to have been present right away following Sunday’s service.
Together, we went to the police station to file a report.Olabiyi’s wife, Pastor Esther, requested public assistance in locating Patience, describing her as a kind, astute, and intelligent girl. She claimed to have searched as far as the village but had reached a dead end in her search.
“We had gone to church on March 31, 2024, but she did not go with me because I went to minister in Ayobo/Ipaja,” she stated. She and my spouse attended church together. One of our neighbors came over with some food. When I contacted my son later to find out why the food warmer was not returned, he said he had forgotten.
We had to go back to the room because our cleaners were currently cleaning the entire house. About 5:15 p.m., I asked the cleaners where she was when I woke up. They claimed she expressed her desire to give the warmer back to its owner. I never heard from her again after this.
I then said, “How could she have returned the warmer if she did not know the woman’s address?”Since then, we have been trying to find her. However, we had to go and report it to the police’s Merian division when it got really serious. Since then, we have been coming and going. I had to make the trip to her village on Friday.
They declared that they had not seen her.One of the senior police officers at the Merian Divisional Police Headquarters, who wished to remain anonymous, responded that they had forwarded all of the missing girl’s information to the control room and had started an investigation when contacted on Monday.
“They have sent all her details to the controller on the radio,” the police officer stated simply. We are putting some effort into it.