A young mother in Kaduna went to work one ordinary morning in the early 1990s, leaving her children with their father. She worked as a clerk in a hospital. When she returned, the house stood empty as she realized that the man and their three children had vanished.
“Before my mother had me, before she even met my own father, she met another man, a Cameroonian,” her daughter, Lister Matthew Osas, says in a video making rounds on social media.
They weren’t married, she never went to Cameroon and he never introduced her to his family. However, Osas’s mother lived with this man, they had five children. Two died young while three, Victoria, Maxwell and Antonia Dibong Mandeng, survived. 
Before their father, Alfred Dibong Mandeng from Douala, packed them up and disappeared, the eldest was six, the middle child four and the youngest was two or three.
First he moved houses inside Nigeria. After locating them in Nigeria that time, the mother stepped out for a few minutes, and by the time she came back, he had moved with the children again. This time, he moved countries with the children, to Cameroon, she believed.
“From that time till now… my mom has not seen her three children,” the daughter said in the video.
“This is pure wickedness.”
For more than three decades, Osas’s mother has carried the absence while she raised another child.
She worked and tried to live, yet the pain surfaced every time . “I’ve seen her cry at different times for this thing,” her daughter recalled. “She tries to cover it so I don’t get to see, but I see.” Osas said.
“I every day don’t know how my mom was able to go through this… She deserves some kind of closure before she leaves this world. Three children, guys, three children.”
On July 31, 2026 Osas decided her mother’s silence had lasted long enough. She picked up her phone and began posting raw videos. She gave out every detail she knew her mother told her, begging Cameroonian bloggers, Nigerian influencers and ordinary people to share the story.
“Please help me. Help my mum,” she says. “I’ve watched my mom suffer. No one has ever helped her.”
The internet sprung to action in sympathy. Her videos were shared on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok too. Some Cameroonian women messaged her and people on the ground offered to knock on doors to find the missing children. Clues appeared that the father may still be alive and she found Instagram pages that look like they belong to two of the already grown children surfaced.
Osas kept posting, promising to not stop till she found her siblings.
SEE ALSO: Inside Cameroon’s Prison Record Label: How Music Is Giving Inmates a Second Chance
On Saturday August 1, after only almost two days of virtual searching, everything changed. “I was able to connect with them yesterday,” she announced on Sunday, with her voice thick with emotion. “I was on a two, three hours, almost three hours call last night. The best thing about this is that it didn’t feel like I was meeting strangers. It feels like we were searching for each other.”
Her mother has now gotten the closure she wanted. Her three children are still alive and well. She also has eleven grandchildren.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the 1st of August 2026 in my life… For the longest time, I’ve been the only child. And knowing that I have two sisters, and a brother, my God. It’s like, I’m in a dream, but I like this. My mother has 11 grandchildren,” the daughter says. “God is so faithful, guys. God is so faithful.”
Osas thanked the Cameroonian community, the bloggers who amplified the videos, the Nigerian accounts that shared them, and every person who prayed, dug or messaged. “You will never lack help,” she says.
About The Author
