Police nab husband and wife for allegedly stealing children sold for N1m each
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
A husband and wife racket team operating from Edo has been arrested by police for allegedly stealing children across Ondo and Osun, with 10 of the victims recovered from a merchant in Anambra who allegedly bought them for N1 million each.
Ondo Police Command arrested Lukman Isiaka, 42, and his wife Abosede Olanipekun, 23, and allegedly recovered 10 of the stolen children, but some distraught parents thronged the command’s headquarters lamenting their own children are still missing.
The couple allegedly used various methods to abduct the children and allegedly sold each for ₦1 million to Sabina Izuorah, 62, a resident of Ihiala in Anambra.
Police investigators disclosed the suspects may have been involved in similar crimes in Edo before extending their operation to Ondo and Osun.
Many of the rescued children struggled to recognise their parents as their names had been changed and they now speak Igbo.
Four infants, aged between one and six weeks, whose parents are not yet identified, were allegedly recovered from Izuorah.
The arrest of the suspects followed a police investigation into the abduction of a child reported missing by her mother.
Police narrated that, to carry out the heist, Isiaka allegedly posed as Samuel Adejobi, promised to marry the child’s mother, and introduced his wife Abosede as his sister called Ewatomi.
On the pretext of buying the woman a phone, Isiaka left her child in the care of his “sister”.
But Isiaka and his accomplice later disappeared with the child, and the mother raised the alarm, prompting the police to track the couple to their residence in Edo.
Some of the recovered children.
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