Family Cries Out Over Attempt To Force Daughter’s Circumcision

The family of Ajakaye who lives at Mafoluku Oshodi Lagos until now were one of the most happy families around. Comfortable by their own standard, Mr. Ajakaye Gbenga Olufemi and his wife, Toyin Oyeronke and their three daughters with one son namely, Ajakaye Ayomide Esther 14 years, Ajakaye Eniola Elizabeth 11 years, Ajakaye Inioluwa Grace 9 years and Ajakaye Israel Firepemi 6 years. They got all it takes to make life pleasurable and worth living for them.

As time goes on, Ajakaye chose to run his private business, Ajo Haulage Logistics for many years, and this contributed immensely to his success. His wife too, a business woman.

They have worked, lived well and remain in the commercial city of Lagos State. They own properties, while working for the success for a better tomorrow for them and their children, who they hoped to nurture to greatness and take over from them wherever they may stop.

But their peace of mind have become troubled in the recent times by a traditional and cultural practice of the Family of the husband, Ajakaye Family in ikole Ekiti, which demands that their three beautiful daughters to whom they own everything they lived for must undergo female genital mutilation.

They have done everything to convince the family to exempt the children from this obnoxious bestial act, but the family would simply not give in to them. In a most solemn voice, Mrs Ajakaye opened up to our reporter on the telephone and began the story of what has become a confounding and most worrying dilemma to the family as the year 2022 grounds to a halt to usher in 2023,
She said, since early 2017, some members of my husband’s family have been pressuring us to release to them our three daughters, the eldest, aged 14 the second child who is now 11 years old and the third daughter 9 years old to have them circumcised according to the family tradition. I have done everything possible with my husband to persuade them to see reasons why we should not circumcise them, particularly my husband’s elder brother, Uncle Olamide Ajakaye, to drop the idea but to no avail. They are bent on mutilating my daughters genitals, insisting that it is the historical practice by which their people preserve their ladies, curtail their sexual arousal and keep them in check.
With their insistent and a threat recently to ensure that the three girls are circumcised, whether we like it or not, we want to appeal to government and the general public to prevail on my husband’s family of Ajakaye compound, in Ikole Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State to leave my innocent daughters alone as we do not want them circumcised. We are forced to bring the matter to the public domain after all attempts to resist the mounting pressure on us from my husband’s family to have the girls circumcised.

We believe this might possibly dissuade them from their hard line position on the matter. Although we realised that this is an age-long standing tradition of large scale practice in Ajakaye’s family particularly in Ikole Ekiti, where my husband hails from and one that has declined, we are by virtue of our religion and education not willing to make our children go through the experience and insist that it is a tradition that should be put behind us in this age and times.

She continued, “We are forced to cry to the public as they have now resorted to threatening me and my daughtes, vowing to have the children circumcised against their wishes. We are scared and afraid that our lives are in danger. I am currently in hiding now, while this has affected my children greatly, their education has now been put on hold and their social life. I am very scared for the lives of my children. These people could probably be monitoring and tailing our movement, they know my children’s school, We are in a dilemma, something urgent needs to be done to put an end to this bestial inclination of my people, we need the public to come to our rescue, government needs to put an end to this barbaric practices of our people, it’s an uncivilized act.