•            Eniola, the street hawker. Photo: Screenshot from the viral video.
 




Kafayat Adeleke, the mother of a deformed street hawker, Sultan Adeleke, popularly known as Eniola, has narrated the reasons her child transformed himself into a lady.


According to the 40-year-old mother, Eniola’s deformity was from childbirth and has been a surprise to all and sundry who have always questioned his physical attributes.


Eniola was recently helped by a skit maker and comedian, Chukwuebuka Emmanuel, popularly known as Brain Jotter in Lagos State, while he was driving along the expressway and ran into the street hawker who claimed to be a make-up artiste aside from hawking bottled water on Lagos highways.


Chiding those who beg online despite not being physically challenged, Brain Jotter said he was impressed by her strive to succeed despite her attributes and gifted her N400,000 while calling on Nigerians to patronise her make-over business too.



The video went viral on Tuesday with singer David Adeleke, aka Davido, tagging the handle of Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, to help the ‘girl’ because she is from Osun.


That action stirred controversies as netizens claimed that the self-acclaimed ‘female hawker’ is not a girl but a boy and has been disguising like that to appeal to the public for help.


Speaking in an interview with a social media enthusiast, Mr LilGaga, on Thursday, Adeleke claimed that her son has always been disguising like that in Osogbo since 2018, and when he was stopped on numerous occasions, he ran away from home and returned to the act.





She said, “Sultan was never born a female; he was born with a deformity, and this was one of the reasons why I even like him.




“He always stopped me from calling him Sultan, but Eniola except that he would desist from taking my calls.


“It was 2020 when he went to Lagos to start asking for help from people while acting as a girl to appeal to the general public to help him.”


Fielding questions on the claim that her son ran away from Osogbo because she wanted to use him for ritual purposes, Adeleke said, “You can come to Osogbo to confirm; he’s the favourite among my children. I love him because it was because of him that people love me while sympathising with his physical condition. That claim is something that makes me sober when I am asked or told.”


She added that the boy had always been going around for the make-up businesses that he learnt in Osogbo and that many times, she went with him to ensure that he returned home since he was always absconding, adding, “There was a day he got angry that I should stop coming with him and that he was no longer interested in staying with me again and that was how he ran to Lagos.”


She, however, claimed that she had never asked him for money except in recent times when his story went viral and was supported with money and other gifts.


The mother further shared pictures that indicated Eniola’s deformity since childbirth and his birth certificate, which revealed that he was born on September 23, 2005.