Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub-Editor: Lee Bullen,  Agency: Asia Wire Report

A Nigerian mum says she and the two daughters she had with her husband have been abandoned by him because of their piercing blue eyes.

Mum Risikat Azeez, who lives in the central Nigerian state of Kwara, said that she was ditched by her hubby Abdul-Wasiu Omo-Dada after their two children turned out to share her piercing blue eyes.

According to newspaper The Punch, Azeez claimed that her husband, who married her with her distinctive look, changed when she gave birth to two children with the same coloured eyes.

Azeez said: “I was born with these eyes and I also gave birth to my children with these same eyes.

“No one had this eye colour before me in my family, on both my mother and father’s side. I’m the first to have this kind of eyes. And when I started having children, they also had it.”

Her sister Balikis Azeez, whose eye colour is dark brown, said: “When my sister was born, people thought she had eye problems but after medical tests, the opticians said there was no problem with her eyes, they said she has ‘foreign’ eyes.”

Azeez said: “My husband is very aware of the condition of my eyes and he loved me for who I am.

“Things started getting bad when I had my first child and later my second child. He totally changed and he would shut me up and walk out on me whenever I tried to start a conversation with him.

“His parents even asked him ‘will you keep on giving birth to children with these eyes?’ He changed to the extent that he would leave the house for a whole week before coming back. There was no food and no provisions, I had to go to my parents’ place to eat.

“My parents later asked me to leave his house. Since I left, he has not shown up to ask why I left or even to ask after me.”

Azeez’s story drew sympathy from Olufolake Abdulrazaq, the wife of Kwara State Governor, who has offered to help the blue-eyed mother.

Researcher Edmund Custers said that blue eyes are linked to “an ancient genetic mutation” and a small number of people get the colour as a result of a condition such as ocular albinism, which affects the eye pigmentation.

Professor Hans Eiberg and his team at the University of Copenhagen said: “Research argues that, at one point in time far in the past, everyone on the planet had brown eyes.

“The first light-eyed human emerged only about 10,000 years ago.”

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