Six year old Nigerian boy Monisola Bakre at the centre of adoption battle in the UK

NIGERIAN-born six-year old boy Monisola Muiz Bakre has become the subject of a bitter custody suit in the UK as his parents have accused the British government of trying to get him forcefully adopted.

Monisola was taken into the British government’s custody in 2013, following multiple injuries he sustained in a domestic accident at his aunt’s residence in London when he was a year old. After a medical examination was carried out at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in London, the London Metropolitan Police accused his mother of causing him non-accidental injury.

Initially, The UK authorities took him into care in July 2012 after a Bromley County Court  ruled that he was at the risk of significant harm for his mother’s failure to notice injuries in his head after the accident. However, the boy’s father, Ayokuleyin Bakre, is accusing the UK government of illegal and forceful adoption of his son.

He added that the inability of his parents to have unrestricted access to him over the past five years is destabilising the Bakre family. Mr Bakre has told his wife, Folashade, not to return to Nigeria without their son.

In its September 15, 2015 judgment filed by the London Borough of Bexley, the London Family Court at Bromley ordered that the applicant is authorised to place the child for adoption with any prospective adopters who may be chosen by the authority. Mr Bakre, however, rejected the judgment, saying the UK government does not have legal and moral right to take full custody of his son as Monisola was born in Nigeria and does not have dual citizenship.

In his petition titled: Illegal attempt to consider Monisola Muiz Bakre for adoption by the Government of United Kingdom, addressed to the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja, Mr Bakre said the British government had denied him the rights to administer paternal care on his child. He said the UK authorities barred him from seeing his child by denying him a visa, noting that the last time he physically saw his son was when he was one-year-old.

Just after his first birthday, Monisola was taken to London by his mother on May 27, 2012 on a visit to his paternal aunt, Mrs Angel Bakre. It is not yet clear of the Nigerian government is going to take up the matter.