Posted by By SEGUN AJAYI on
A Norwegian, Robin Bendiksen has made a passionate appeal to Nigerians via the Internet to help him locate his wife of Edo State origin, Eliz Doris Omosigho, whom he fears is being held hostage somewhere in her village.
A Norwegian, Robin Bendiksen has made a passionate appeal to Nigerians via the Internet to help him locate his wife of Edo State origin, Eliz Doris Omosigho, whom he fears is being held hostage somewhere in her village.
Bendiksen, 35, in a message he posted on an online interactive forum for Nigerians at home and abroad on July 13, said Doris left Norway for Nigeria with a four-month pregnancy in June, last year and had since not returned.
In a reply to an e-mail enquiry by Daily Sun, to confirm the authenticity of his message on Talknigeria,co.ik, Bendiksen said he decided not to come down to Nigeria to look for Doris because it would have been too risky, without anybody to trust and with no idea of her specific village.
Narrating his story, Bendiksen said he met Doris, a native of Abudu, Edo State, in Dakar, Senegal where she worked as hair dresser in a saloon, adding that they got married on July 29, 2003.
He said his ordeal started shortly after Doris became pregnant and insisted that she had to travel to her village to perform a ritual for women expecting babies for the first time.
Bendiksen said that he informed his home government about his wife's condition and asked if it was safe for her to travel down to Nigeria. Apparently Doris had no residency papers yet.
He said the officials told him that there was no problem but that she had to wait in Nigeria until the immigration office completes the processing of her work permit.
Unfortunately, Bendiksen narrated, 'when Doris was seven months pregnant, a complication occurred and she had to be admitted to an hospital in Nigeria. She had a forced labour and a baby girl was born, but the baby did not live for one hour as she died on September 14, 2004."
Meanwhile, after much pressure on Norwegian government, Bendiksen said work and resident permit was issued for Doris in November 2004. However, his wife's passport had by then been stolen in Lagos.
On learning that her work and resident permit had been faxed to the Norwegian Embassy in Abuja, getting there, she met brick walls, her husband narrated.
'After Norwegian immigration officials told me that my wife's papers had been faxed to Abuja, I phoned a lady in the Embassy and told her that Doris was coming to collect her visa." Unfortunately, he narrated further, his spouse forgot to take along police record on her lost passport.
But rather than tell her to go back and collect the police report, the Embassy officials allegedly subjected Doris to questioning, apparently to ascertain the veracity of her claims that she was indeed married to a Norwegian. She was sent back to Benin to collect the police record, and pictures of her husband. Before then, Bendiksen explained that the Norwegian Embassy in Abuja had withheld his wife's Norwegian passport. His (Bendiksen's) intervention to make the Embassy see reason and release the wife's work and resident permits proved abortive.
As a result of the delay, 'my wife's brothers, Richards and Lorenz travelled to Abudu for Christmas and they started questioning her about her plan to go back to Norway. He quoted them as saying: 'nobody would take care of their aged mother (Mrs Mary Omosighor) should she be allowed to go." But in Bendiksen's views, his brothers-in-law didn't want Doris to return because they want to be spared the responsibility of looking after their mother, so that they can be free to live their lives the way they want.
The new head of the family, after the death of Mr John Omosigho Eboigbe, he said, waded into the matter, but the brothers remained adamant.
Desperate for an escape, he said Doris went to hide in her friend's house in the village. Three days later, she was found and locked up for three days by her brothers and had since been allegedly held hostage.
According to the husband, one of Doris' brothers, a police officer, even threatened to arrest anyone who volunteers to help her escape from the village.
Bendiksen recalled the last conversation he had with his wife on phone in January, when she told him amid sobs, 'my family is not my family any longer, they are my enemy." By then, she had ten minutes credit left in her phone.
Reiterating his avowed love for the Nigerian, Bendiksen stated: 'I love Doris with all my heart, and she loves me. We want to live our lives together."
He further lamented how his wife's predicament has made her run out of cash, stating that she only came down to Nigeria with the money for her return ticket.
Since then, Bendiksen disclosed that Doris has been trading in children's clothes to keep body and soul together. The Norwegian's efforts at making his country's Embassy assist him in tracing his wife have not yielded any fruit, as the officials have reportedly refused to speak to him on phone or reply his mails.
Meanwhile, the Norwegian revealed that he was been receiving 419 calls and e-mails from fraudulent people either impersonating his wife or offering to help in locating her. However, he says he has been smart enough not to have fallen for ay.