Aishatu Usman’s modest apartment in a busy neighbourhood at Abattoir, Agege, Lagos was full of sympathisers last week. It was also filled with cries of anguish. The apartment, a shack, was constructed with zinc and a few planks of cheap wood.The sun was out and the heat in the shack was thick and unbearable. But the sympathisers, most of them women worked tirelessly, begging Usman to stop wailing.
But the tall, thin woman would not be easily dissuaded. She wailed: “That woman killed my son.” Still holding on tightly to the lifeless body of her nine-year-old son. She would not stop crying and she refused to let go.
The cut of death
As she cried, Punch correspondent noticed that her pink top was wet with drops of milk seeping out of her engorged breast. By this time, the skin of the little boy, who will never suckle, had grown pale. The woman whom Usman blamed for the death of her son was a traditional birth attendant. She had provided two services for Usman: she helped to deliver her of