IBADAN, Nigeria – Allegedly abandoned by their American mother in Africa, seven children from Texas begged small change to buy food and shuttled from a neglectful stranger’s care to a concrete-block orphanage, Nigerians said Thursday.
Eventually, the children proved their American citizenship to a passing missionary from Texas by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He notified U.S. authorities, who got the youngsters home last week as Texas welfare officials investigated the mother.
Ages 8 to 16, the three boys and four girls, all of whom had been adopted by the woman, apparently spent 10 months in this market city of millions bustling with traders and crippled and leprous beggars.
A Nigerian welfare official said local authorities first learned about the children only a few weeks ago, and immediately took them into custody and turned them over to the government orphanage.
By then, they were skinny, mosquito-bitten and suffering from malnutrition, malaria and typhoid, officials and other people said.
“Three of them were sick. They could not walk,” said a 23-year-old who gave his name as Alex and is a former ward of the orphanage now living there as a student. “They looked tired. They’d been sick for long, without food.”
The young Americans found themselves living not only with other orphans, but juvenile criminals, including young thieves and rapists.
U.S. authorities believe the seven American children arrived in Nigeria in October with their mother, whose fiance has a relative here. The mother, Mercury Liggins, 47, left within weeks. She later took a job as a food-service worker in U.S. military mess halls in Iraq, but quit in July, U.S. officials said. She is believed to be back in Houston, but couldn’t be located for comment.
Government workers and others who knew the children said she originally left them in the care of a businessman, Obiora Nwankwo, who has a well-tended, two-story house in an affluent neighborhood of Ibadan. The nature of the relationship between Liggins and Nwankwo wasn’t known.
The seven were all malnourished. “Some of them were sick, critically ill,” with typhoid and malaria, the official said.
Four were sick enough to be hospitalized, but eventually joined their siblings at the orphanage, the official said. It wasn’t revealed which children went to the hospital.
Nigerian officials did not notify the U.S. Embassy, the official added, saying that was because the case was a sensitive matter diplomatically.
Some people speculated the government wanted to get the children healthy first.
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