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| Kelly with a photograph of his son and himself |
As at the time of their departure, their
love adventure had not been consummated in a holy wedlock. However,
they lived together and had a common dream.
Typical of emigrants, the journey of
Kelly, Omosefe and Osagie to Spain was not all rosy, neither was their
initial effort to settle down there.
They actually arrived at their
destination in two boats – father first, then mother and baby. They also
had difficulty finding a job, and to worsen their case, they had no
legal residency papers.
So, the young family settled in Murcia with a relative of Omosefe.
Continue after the cut..
To seek better job in order to fend for
Osagie and mum, Kelly moved from Murcia in 2001 to Barcelona. He visited
his family bi-weekly to see how they were faring. But on one of his
visits in October 2001, he discovered that Omosefe had been deported and
Osagie deposited in a children’s home.
Now aged 36, Kelly is battling the Spanish authorities for the custody of their son. Kelly was 25 when he last saw Osagie.
Omosefe was 21 years old when she was
sent back to Nigeria without her son, who was then slightly above one
year old. She was accused of practicing prostitution.
That singular action by the Marcia
authorities left a sour taste in Kelly’s mouth. When he spoke to our
correspondent on the telephone, he described the years without his first
child as “tortuous”.
It is more worrisome for him that going
by the Murcia authorities’ stance, there appears not to be any
possibility of him ever reuniting with Osagie.
He recalled that while he was in
Barcelona, the police on October 13, 2001, arrested Omosefe as an
illegal Nigerian immigrant claiming that she was working as a prostitute
on the streets of Murcia and took her to a detention centre to await
deportation.
He said that despite the fact that her
lawyer filed a request for her release nine days after, informing the
court that she had a little baby to look after, the authorities
nevertheless deported her.
Kelly said that not only did they
separate the little boy from his family; they also gave him out on
adoption to an entirely strange family.
He said he had since then been in touch
with his mother through the telephone and that she asked him to
endeavour to get the boy back.
“Immediately I heard of the deportation,
I returned to salvage my son. But I was denied access to him. The
Murcia authorities claimed that the child was abandoned. Before we knew
what was happening, another family had adopted Osagie and I have not
seen him since then.
“I have been through a lot since that
time. To further press home our demand, I invited his mum to Spain in
2008, and we were even on local television together on this issue. I did
paternity test in 2004. I am determined to get my son back,” he said.
Kelly, who now lives in Santa Coloma de
Gramenet in Barcelona province, noted that another Nigerian woman called
Patience was deported alongside Omosefe for the same reason. He said
her child was also withheld from her and wondered if the Spanish
authority was following a trend.
He said there had been several court
cases in Spain on Osagie’s issue and expressed joy that they found
something wrong with the approach used by the authority.
A Spanish newspaper, El Pais in English
wrote in its June 22, 2012 publication, “When the administration
realised that a mistake had occurred, among other reasons because the
media denounced this and an identical case involving another Nigerian
child separated from his deported mother, it immediately tried to get
mother (Omosefe) and child (Osagie) back together by asking the Nigerian
Embassy to locate Omosefe. But she never turned up. Years later, in
court, the government alleged that once deported, it was impossible to
bring the mother back, and that the little boy had not been signed up in
the Civil Registry, which left him in a legal limbo and made him a ward
of the state.”
But Kelly denied the claim, reiterating that he had been in communicating with Omosefe on the telephone all these years.
He said that after a decade of appeals
in various Spanish courts, the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg ruled that there had been a breach of the European Convention
on the Rights of the Child.
Since there was no hope of reuniting
with his erstwhile lover, Kelly now lives with another woman with two
children, but he is still yearning for his first born.
In the same vein, he said that Omosefe had been trying to settle down after the ugly experience.
Kelly said that Strasbourg had in a
ruling, established that the Spanish state was guilty, but that it could
not return Osagie to his biological father. It, therefore, asked the
government to pay Kelly 8,000 euros as damages.
“I don’t want money. Spain is terrible;
all I want is my son. It is unfortunate that when I ran to the Nigerian
Embassy in Spain for help on this issue, they acted indifferent. I must
not be allowed to suffer this injustice forever. I am alive, I live in
the same country but I am denied access to my son. I have the means to
cater for my son. I want my son back,” Kelly cried out.
Contacted for comments, the
spokesperson, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Ogbole Ahmedu-Ode, said
that the Nigerian embassy was not aware of the case.
He said, “I got in touch with our
mission in Madrid, Spain and I was informed that there is no record of
such a case. Our mission there has handled a number of cases involving
Nigerians over the years, but this one is not in our records.
“The Honourable Minister of Foreign
Affairs has in line with the directive of Mr. President, directed all
our missions to ensure that Nigerians are treated fairly, even in cases
where they are accused of committing an offence.
“One of the main objectives of
establishing embassies abroad is to ensure that Nigerians and the
interest of Nigeria are protected. To the b owledge, our missions have
been up and doing.”
Attempts to reach the Spanish Embassy in Abuja for comments were not successful as no official was ready to handle the matter.
For now, Kelly can only hope that somehow, things will change for the better and he will be reunited with his son.
-Punch
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