Police Arrest Couple for Alleged Child Trafficking, Rescue 10 Stolen Children

Nigerian police have arrested a couple involved in an alleged child trafficking ring and successfully recovered 10 stolen children during the operation.

The Ondo State Police Command has arrested a couple, 42-year-old Lukman Isiaka and his 23-year-old wife Abosede Olanipekun, on suspicion of abducting and trafficking children across the states of Ondo and Osun.

During the operation, authorities successfully rescued 10 abducted children from the couple. Despite this, several distressed parents who had gathered at the command’s headquarters expressed their sorrow that their missing children were still unaccounted for.

The police reported that the couple used multiple strategies to kidnap children and sold each child for ₦1 million to Sabina Izuorah, a 62-year-old from Ihiala in Anambra State. The alleged purchaser is now under investigation.

Investigators revealed that the suspects might have committed similar crimes in Edo State before expanding their activities to Ondo and Osun.

Many of the rescued children found it difficult to recognize their parents because their names had been changed, and they now spoke the Igbo dialect.

A number of them were taken in 2022.

The Ondo State Police Command recovered four infants, aged between one and six weeks, from 62-year-old Sabina Izuorah. The parents of these children remain unidentified.

Lukman Isiaka and his wife, Abosede Olanipekun, were arrested following a police investigation into the reported abduction of a child who had been declared missing by her mother.

Isiaka, pretending to be Samuel Adejobi, had vowed to marry the child’s mother and presented his wife, Abosede, as his sister named Ewatomi.

Under the guise of purchasing a phone for the woman, Isiaka left her child with his “sister.”

When Isiaka and his accomplice vanished with the child, the distraught mother sounded an alarm, which led the police to trace the pair to their home in Edo State.