Comfort Peter, a 23-year-old lady, has asked the Nigeria Army to help her identify her estranged partner, Sergeant Julius Simon, who pregnant her in 2017 and then vanished.
Ms. Peter told media on Thursday at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Centre in Bauchi that Sergeant Simon, who she said was serving with the Biu Regiment of the Army, violated her at the age of 19, resulting in pregnancy.
According to her, she met Simon in 2017 in Bauchi when he and others arrived for special operations, and the soldier made love approaches to her, which she said the lady she was working with did not approve of.
“She told me that if Julius actually loves me then he should come to our house. When I told him (Simon), he agreed and started coming to our house,” she said, adding that she was 19 then, while her lover was 30.
She said one day, her father saw him in army uniform and asked him if he wanted to marry her, which Simon answered in the affirmative.
“My father said he desired that I go for further studies because I just finished secondary school but Julius promised to marry me,” she said, adding that she chose marriage over going to school when her father asked her to choose between the two.
She said they started courtship and her lover invited her to his house one day, which she claimed she protested but he said they had finished their assignment in Bauchi and would be returning to Biu and he wanted to see her before his departure.
“I went to his house and he prevented me from going back to my father’s house that day. I told him that if he did not want me to return to my father’s house, then he would marry me and I would stay with him. He agreed. He seized my phone and he forced me to have sex with him that day,” Peter said amid tears.
According to her, prior to that incident, she was a virgin, adding that the next day, the soldier asked her to leave.
“I told him that was not our agreement. He promised to get back to me and take me to live with him. When I came home my father almost killed me for sleeping outside.
“Few days later, I started vomiting. My father noticed and asked my mother. My mother said it was just malaria.”
She informed that when she noticed that she was pregnant, she ran out of the house to her aunt’s house in Tafawa Balewa since her father had been warning his female children that any of them who brought pregnancy to the house would be disowned.
She explained that she visited Sergeant Simon twice in Biu but each time she went, he became furious and threatened not to marry her again.
According to Ms Peter, she had not set her eyes on Simon since she gave birth to a baby boy in June, 2019, adding that the soldier’s telephone number was switched off.
She said that, “I communicated with one of his friends who told me they have been posted to Maiduguri . The friend told me that Julius said he would not marry me again,” adding that she regretted going out with Simon.
“How can you treat someone that you said you love like this?”she asked rhetorically, adding that her soldier lover had cheated her.
Asked what she wants, the mother of one simply retorted that all she wants is justice, adding that the soldier should take responsibility for his child.
“I want justice. Let him come and be a father to his son because the boy is two years old now and has started asking for his father.
“Julius was the one that deflowered me. He promised to marry me but deceived me. I will never love or trust any man again but he must take care of his son,” Peter, who was in company with her father, declared.
She then pleaded with Army authorities to help her to locate the father of her son and also make him take responsibility for the child.
“As for me, l no longer love him. I have forgiven him but won’t marry him again,’ she said.
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