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Relatives of a 19-year-old girl, Teresa John, are yet to come to terms with her sudden disappearance after attending a church programme in Ogolonto, Ikorodu area of Lagos State about a month ago.
The missing teenager is the only child of her mother, Hannah, who is a widow.
Teresa, who is said to be suffering from speech impairment and was most times locked up in the room by the mother so she would not wander away, had gone for a crusade organised by Whole Life Bible Church Inc, a worship centre around Ojota where she lived with her mother.
The head of the church, Pastor Victoria Anwo, said the girl had come for the programme, but went missing after boarding the wrong bus.
She said, “We chartered a bus that took us to the crusade, but we followed different buses back home.
“We learnt that Teresa boarded the wrong bus after we ended the crusade. This was because she did not know the way home and those around her did not realise this. They thought she could find her way home.”
The pastor said it was when the mother did not find her that night that she called the church, after which every member of the church started searching for,we gathered that apart from pasting posters around the state which bore Teresa’s picture, the church and Teresa’s relatives also reported it at the Alausa Police Division and other stations along Ikorodu Road with the hope of locating the missing girl.
Hannah told us that the search party met a woman the following morning, who told them that she sighted her daughter crying in the midst of a crowd because she could not find her way home.
She said, “The woman told us that Teresa was crying because she had missed her way home. She could not talk very well and she did not know where she was going, so it was hard to help her.
“She said they were all helpless until a man came. The man spoke Ibo to her, after which she stopped crying and merely nodded. The woman said it was the man that took her away.”
She said the information raised their hope that time, adding that the family was once again living with anxiety over the fate of their girl.
She said, “All efforts to find the man or Teresa have proved abortive and nobody has come out with useful information about her whereabouts.”
Hannah, who regretted her action of always shutting Teresa indoors, said the family had spent over N100, 000 in a bid to find her.
She appealed to the man believed to have taken Teresa away to take her to the nearest police station.
She said, “I am pleading with whoever is with my daughter to please release her. She is all I have and her father is dead. At my age, there is no child for me again.”
The state police command’s spokesperson, Ngozi Braide, said she could not find record of the report at the Alusa Police Station, though Hannah insisted the family had reported at the station.
