Woman Lodges, Abandons Baby In Hotel Room (Photo)

A middle-aged woman, Hafsat Usman, has abandoned her one-year old son in a hotel room at Icon Suites (formerly Pinnacle Hotel) in Mararaba, a suburb of Nasarawa State bordering the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

The manager of the hotel located on Baba Street, opposite Abacha Road, Mr Uji Omale, who confirmed this to LEADERSHIP, said the lady who gave her name as Hafsat Usman walked into the hotel with the child at about 5:44pm last Sunday and requested for a single room, but later accepted to check into a two-room suite as that was the one available at the time, with the agreement that she would move into a single room once that is available.

“The woman exhibited some restless behaviour that night, aimlessly moving around but later went to her room. Only for us to discover her key, which she kept on the receptionist’s table while leaving the hotel, as the receptionist was doing something elsewhere within the premises at about 5:30am,” he narrated.

“It was in the process of going to check and tidy up the room that we saw the child; a boy who should be a little above one year old, sleeping on the bed. We waited to see if she would come back until about 11:30am when the director ordered that the police be called and informed about the ugly development and I did so immediately by contacting police at Abacha Road,” he continued.

According to Omale, at the time of checking in, the woman was asked to put down her number on the form given to her to fill, but she said her mobile handset was out of use.

He stated that the police at Abacha Road said they could not handle such a case there and so he took the boy to the Division A Police Station, Mararaba where the boy was kept in custody of the police.