Woman beats her 10-year - old maid to death in Lagos

The police in Lagos State have arrested a
middle-aged woman, Linda Alapa, for
allegedly beating her 10-year-old
housemaid, Joy Mbafan, to death.
Mbafan lived with the suspect on Bolanle
Oduniyi Street, Okegbegun, in the Ikorodu
area of the state.
PUNCH Metro learnt that Alapa was
flogging the girl for a misdemeanor around
3am last Monday when she passed out and
died afterwards.
At the Ikorodu General Hospital morgue
where she had gone to deposit Mbafan’s
corpse, a doctor on duty was said to have
noticed marks of violence on the body and
alerted the police at the Sagamu Road
Division.
A police source said that after
interrogation, Alapa confessed to beating
the girl, adding that she would be charged
with murder
“She wanted to
absolve herself of the
death of the victim,
but for the doctor on
duty who raised the
alarm after a close
examination and she
was arrested. There
are marks of violence
on the body of the
deceased and she did
not deny beating her.”

Some residents of Bolanle Oduniyi Street,
who spoke to PUNCH Metro on
Wednesday, said they had warned her
many times to desist from assaulting the
victim to no avail.
A neighbour of the suspect said Alapa did
not only beat the girl but also starved her
of food.
The woman, who gave her name only as
Ellen, said although she did not know what
led to the beating on that day, “she usually
beat the girl for messing up their
apartment.”

Around 3am on the
day the girl died, I
heard her crying as
the woman (Alapa)
flogged her. I woke up
my husband to
intervene. He said he
was tired of the
woman’s insults. After
a while, she stopped
crying.
“It was when I came
back from work that
afternoon that I saw a
crowd on our
premises in tears.
They said Joy
(Mbafan) was dead.
The woman’s husband
was not at home that
day. It was the
landlord that told him
about the incident on
the telephone.”

The landlord and Alapa’s husband were
not around when our correspondent
visited the residence on Wednesday. The
Alapas’ apartment was locked.
Another resident, who spoke on condition
of anonymity, said the girl’s father was late
while her mother was ill, adding that Alapa
had brought her to Lagos from a village in
the eastern part of Nigeria.
“But she used to beat
up and starve the girl
of food. On several
occasions, the girl
would come to me to
eat, saying her aunty
did not give her food.”
Lamenting Mbafan’s death, a trader in the
area, who identified herself only as
Deborah, told PUNCH Metro that she had
urged the suspect to counsel Mbafan rather
than apply corporal punishment.
She said, “She made
that little girl to lose
self-confidence. Her
body bore marks of
lashes. Now that the
girl is dead, she
should also face the
music.”