Ondo Court Orders Government to Pay N25 Million After Baby Vanishes From State Juvenile Home

An Ondo State High Court in Akure has ordered the Ondo State Government and the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development to pay N25 million in damages to Mrs. Opeyemi Adegboyega, whose three-month-old son disappeared while in the care of a government-run juvenile home in 2017.

Justice Oluyemi Akintan Osadebay delivered the ruling, finding the state government directly accountable for the disappearance of the infant, Omoniyi Oluwaseun, and for the failure to provide any credible account of what became of him.

The facts of this case, as established by the court, are worth laying out carefully because each detail adds to the picture of how a vulnerable woman and her child fell through the cracks of a system that was supposed to protect them both.

Mrs. Adegboyega was admitted to the Ondo State Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital for treatment of schizophrenia and depression. While she was receiving inpatient care, her three-month-old son was placed in the custody of the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, specifically at the Ondo State Juvenile Home.

When she was discharged and came to reclaim her child, she was told he had died and that his remains had been taken to a mortuary.

She went to verify that claim at the State Specialist Hospital. Officials there allegedly told her that no corpse matching her son's description had been received by ministry officials.

No death certificate. No mortuary record. No burial documentation. No body.

Justice Osadebay was unsparing in his assessment of the government's defence.

The court dismissed the defendants' version of events as unreliable and unsupported by evidence. The judge specifically noted that the government failed to present any credible proof that the child died, was injured, or was otherwise properly accounted for while in official custody.

The absence of medical reports, mortuary records, or burial documents was treated not as an administrative gap but as a substantive failure of duty. The court concluded that the infant's departure from the juvenile home was the direct result of the defendants' negligence.

The Ondo State juvenile home baby disappearance ruling found that Mrs. Adegboyega suffered significant emotional grief, personal loss, and psychological trauma as a result of her son vanishing while under the ministry's care and supervision.

The damages awarded reflect that finding:

• N15 million in ordinary damages
• N10 million in exemplary and aggravated damages for emotional and psychological distress
• N200,000 in costs