WICKEDNESS: Businessman Tortures Apprentice, Locks Him Up For 10 Days Without Food (PHOTO)

Thankgod Nwabisi, 23, from Adani, Uzo-Uwani L.G.A of Enugu State was thoroughly tortured, tied with ropes and dumped inside a room in his master’s house for about ten days without food or water. Serving as an apprentice to an auto -parts dealer in Ladipo, Lagos, popularly called Elopee, he had signed an agreement to serve the man for seven years, and had already served five years before the ugly incident.

According to him, he was accused of not reconciling their sale’s book properly resulting in the loss of N4,000. “I was abandoned inside the kitchen for about three days until I noticed that somebody slipped a plate of food through an opening to me. Hungrily, I ate the food. I was defecating and urinating inside the same place until seven days later when the pains became unbearable. I then started crying and raising my voice, calling for help. It was then that I knew that the small girl living with us, a relation of my master’s wife, was also left in the house and she was the person that slipped food into the kitchen for me”.

This torture of the boy aroused the anger of their neighbours who promptly alerted policemen on patrol from Ayobo division and they swiftly responded.

The police broke into the premise and quickly rescued the poor boy and while searching the house, they saw a female teenager who claimed to be a relation to the wife of his master and they took all of them to their station for questioning.

It was gathered that after Policemen broke into the house, they found the female teenager in the parlour. She led them to the kitchen where they saw the boy, tied like a goat with splashes of his urine and excreta all over the room.

The divisional Police officer, Musa Lariski reportedly directed his men to quickly rush the boy to the nearest hospital where he was giving proper medical attention beofore he was brought back to the station. It was learnt that since then, all efforts made by detectives to trace the owner of the house and his wife yielded negative results. A team of policemen were also said to have gone to his shop at Ladipo market only to discover that he had not shown his face since the the boy was rescued from his house.

Meet 11-year-old boy Whose Dream Is to Kill the President of His Country (PHOTO)

Mohammed Afar, the resident of Aleppo area in Syria is 11 years old. The modified Kalashnikov assault rifle he carries stretches to more than half of his height.

Over the top of his faded yellow jacket a Free Syrian Army (FSA) vest holds three extra clips, each full with live ammunition, and a walkie-talkie. An FSA badge sits on one side and a rendering of the Islamic Shahada, in Arabic calligraphy, on the other.

He says he does not miss school or want to stay at home with his mother and two sisters.

“I want to stay as a fighter until Bashar is killed,” he says, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The fighters surrounding him, all claiming to be from Liwa al-Tawhid, pass him a sniper rifle and offer to take him to a frontline, so he can demonstrate his shooting.

The father of the boy, Mohammed Saleh Afar refers to his son as ” great shot” and “a little lion.”

Over the course of its grinding 21-month insurgency, Syria’s children have endured numerous abuses.

Caught-up in shelling, airstrikes, and sniping, they have additionally been subject to arbitrary arrest, torture and rape, as reported by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria in August; which, additionally, noted “with concern reports that children under 18 are fighting and performing auxiliary roles for anti-Government armed groups.”

Both the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children carry provisions that call for not using combatants under the age of 15, while the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute makes it a war crime.

Mohammed quickly disengages his magazine and presents it, before skillfully reinserting it, but not chambering a round. The older fighters surrounding him – some of whom are little more than boys themselves – praise his speed and mirror his father’s earlier statements, calling him a “good shot.”

He says he admires the fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra – composed of hardline Islamists subscribing to Takfiri ideology – and recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. Al-Nusra have proven effective in battle, winning itself scores of supporters.

Many of its fighters previously cut their teeth on other frontlines of the global jihad – notably Iraq and Afghanistan, but also throughout Central Asia and the Middle East.

The group’s rise has imbued the opposition with an unmistakable Islamicist hue while raising fears of a sectarian bloodbath in the event that Assad falls: Syria is home to Sunni, Alawite, Druze, Christians and Yazidi.

“They [Jabhat al-Nusra] know Islam and Sharia. They know what it means to be a Muslim,” Mohammed

“When my father goes to the frontline, he takes me with him,” says Mohammed. “He says to be careful and we find a safe place to shoot from.”

According to a November Human Rights Watch report, some opposition groups fighting in Syria “are using children for combat and other military purposes.”

“Even when children volunteer to fight, commanders have a responsibility to protect them by turning them away,” said its children’s researcher, Priyanka Motaparthy, in the report.

“Children are easily influenced by older relatives and friends, but their participation in armed hostilities places them in grave danger of being killed, permanently disabled, or severely traumatized.”

Yet Mohammed’s father – his long and graying beard styled in the fashion favored by religiously conservative Salafists – sees little wrong with his son’s participation.

“I put my trust in God,” he says.

The other members of the unit agree. The 11-year-old is kept safe, they claim, and never taken to frontlines that are too dangerous.