Nigeria: Police Arrest Woman Over Selling of Babies

8 April 2013

Nigeria: Police Arrest Woman Over Selling of Babies

BY KOLA NIYI EKE, 8 APRIL 2013

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Photo: Lauren Everitt/AllAfrica

A newborn.

Police in Asaba Delta State have arrested a 40 year old woman identified as Gladys (surname withheld), at Oduke camp, near Asaba who allegedly specialised in harbouring young pregnant girls in her house with the intent to selling their babies after delivery to herbalists.

The state police commissioner, Mr Ikechukwu Aduba told LEADERSHIP that the suspect, a native of Owerri, in Imo State, lures young girls to the camp with the promise of getting jobs for them in Asaba, adding that one of the victims hinted the police detectives who swung into action and arrested the suspect in her operational base. The police boss disclosed that the suspect hoodwinks parents and relations of the girls by promising to send them to school or train them in other vocations.

LEADERSHIP reliably gathered that after wooing the girls to the camp, the suspect invites sex hungry men to be having sex with them without condom and in most cases they pay for the sex.

The girls are allegedly subjected to oath takings which forbid them from disclosing the secret to outsiders.

Speaking further, the police commissioner said that upon interrogation the suspect confessed how she started the camp adding that once they are pregnant, she feeds them, cloth them and will not allow them to leave the camp until they put to bed.

LEADERSHIP checks revealed that at Oduke camp, the suspect engages some ritualists as customers who allegedly inspect the pregnant girls with a view to knowing the date of their delivery and to negotiate how much it will cost them to buy the babies.

Our correspondent reports that at the camp there are also medical doctors and nurses who work on part-time basis to examine and treat the pregnant girls until the delivery of their babies.

According to the police boss, the doctors and the nurses fled into the bush on sighting the police.

LEADERSHIP gathered that the babies are sold for between N250,000 and N500,000 depending on their sex, with their mothers getting between N50,000 and N100,000.

Disclosing that the suspect was arraigned by the police inspector, Otubu who led the team of detectives, the police boss said that the suspect was arraigned last Friday at an Asaba Magistrate Court 2.

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