Adamawa State Police Command has arrested female suspects for alleged conspiracy, stealing and selling of a four-year-old boy known as Friday Okonkwo.
The suspects, Blessing Okonkwo, 24, and Efunaya Nabufe, 35, who live in Mubi North local government area of the state have allegedly confessed to the crime while being interrogated by the police public relations officer, SP Suleiman Nguroje.
Narrating how it happened, the mother of the victim, Hauwa Lawan, who lives in Rimirgo in the Askira Uba Local Government Area of Borno State has expressed dismay, wondering how her own daughter could sell her sibling to a total stranger.
She said, “She visited some time last year and lied to me that she would be taking her kid brother to enroll him in a school in the city, seeing there’s no good school in our village.
“Ever since she took away the boy I never heard from him, because any time I called to hear his voice she kept telling me one lie or the other for one year now. I got tired of asking and since I least suspected my own daughter could do this to me, I didn’t raise any alarm.
“As God will have it, she took a proposed husband home to her father in the southeast, the father demanded to know the whereabouts of his child first before attending to her marriage proposal.
“She then lied to him that the kid was dead, but the father consulted an oracle and was told the child was alive. He then threatened her and she opened up and told him the truth; that he was living with a woman in Enugu.
“When her father informed me, I reported the matter to the police who swiftly arrested her and her accomplice, the child trafficker, one Efunaya Nabufe.”
the police spokesperson said, “On July 2, 2024, one Hauwa Lawan, a resident of Rimirgo in the Askira Uba Local Government Area of Borno State, reported to the Adamawa State Police Command that her 3-year old son, Friday Okonkwo was stolen.
“Immediately the Commissioner of Police, Dankombo Morris, ordered the Divisional Police Officer in Mubi South, SP Aaron Ezra to commence investigation and as God would have it two suspects, Blessing Friday, 24 and Efunaya Nabufe, 35 were apprehended in connection to the crime.
“As it stands, the CP has directed that discreet investigation be conducted after which all suspects, including the two who are giving useful information would be charged to court according to the extant laws of the land,” Ngurore said.
During interrogation, Blessing said she had used the money to buy a grinding machine and handset and gave her fiance N200,000.
