The two-month-old boy who was beaten by his father and had his hand fractured earlier this week in Imo State has reportedly died.
SaharaReporters had reported that a Nigerian man identified as Confidence Amatobi, reportedly broke the two-month-old baby’s arm for “disturbing his sleep.”
Unfortunately, the baby died a few days after his broken hand was reportedly amputated.
A Tweep, Kanu Garba, on Friday evening confirmed the baby’s death in a tweet, saying, “The two-month-old baby who was beaten by his father for disturbing his sleep died today.
“Before his death, the hand injured had to be amputated. The father can now sleep peacefully.”
However, the suspect is still at large as there is no report of his arrest yet.
SaharaReporters reported earlier that a man identified as Confidence Amatobi, a native of Amurie in Isu LGA of Imo state, allegedly broke his two-month-old baby’s arm for “disturbing his sleep.”
The assault on the little baby which led to the amputation of the fractured arm, attracted condemnation and outrage with the Imo State Chapter of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), and the National Human Right Commission (NHRC) calling on the Imo State Government and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to immediately arrest and prosecute the suspect.
However, when SaharaReporters reached out to the spokesman of the Imo Police Command, CSP Mike Abattam, on the incident, said that the police had not received any official complaint.
According to him, “As it is now, the police have not received any official complaint about the incident.”
SaharaReporters had reported that NAWOJ, NHRC and the mother of the little baby (Miracle) had, in a joint press briefing in Owerri on Monday, lamented the assault on the innocent baby and called for justice.
The Imo State Chairperson of NAWOJ, Dr Dorothy Nnaji, had said that injury inflicted on the baby by the 31-year-old father led to the amputation of the little boy’s right hand at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Owerri.
Expressing shock over the incident, Mrs Nnaji, described it as dastardly cruel that a father could assault his innocent child simply because he was crying and disturbing his sleep.
She disclosed that Amatobi was reported to have repeatedly hit the baby with a plastic object to stop him from crying until the right hand broke.
Describing the attack on the little boy as the height of child abuse, the chairperson demanded justice for the baby since he could not speak for himself.
The Imo State Coordinator NHRC, Mrs Ukachi Ukah, on her part condemned the brutality and insisted that justice must be allowed to take its course.
Narrating her ordeal, the mother of Miracle, Mrs Favour Chikwe who hails from Idemili Community, Anambra State disclosed that she had left Miracle with his father on Friday, October 7, 2022, to use the convenience, when the incident happened.
Favour recalled that she overheard her baby crying uncontrollably and had to rush back to know the cause of her cry only for her to discover that his right hand was swollen and bone broken from the beating he received from his father.
Amatobi, it was learnt, confessed that the baby was disturbing him with his cry while he was sleeping and he had to try to stop him by battering him.
