A 33-year-old woman in Ogun State, Olaide Adekunle, says she sold her 18-month-old baby for 600,000 to settle a debt.
Abimbola Oyeyemi, Ogun State police spokesman, made this known to newsmen while parading the arrested suspect on Monday in Abeokuta.
Oyeyemi said that the woman was arrested following a complaint lodged at Sango police division by the woman’s husband, Nureni Rasaq.
The police spokesman said the suspect’s husband reported that his wife left home for Lagos in March with their baby girl, Moridiat Rasaq, but she returned home without the baby.
Oyeyemi further said that the suspect’s husband informed the police that all efforts to know what happened to the baby proved abortive as the woman was unable to give any reasonable account of the baby’s whereabouts.
He said that said the DPO Sango division, Dahiru Saleh, immediately detailed his detectives to arrest the suspect.
The PPRO said that during interrogation, the suspect subsequently confessed to have sold the baby for N600,000.
“On interrogation, the suspect confessed to have sold the baby to someone in Lagos for six hundred thousand naira (N600,000).
“When asked the reason for her action, she stated that she borrowed money from a microfinance bank, and when she was unable to pay back the money, the bank agents started dragging her and threatening to deal decisively with her.
“It was consequence upon this that she ran to Lagos and started hawking sachet water. It was while hawking that she met a man who introduced her to the woman that eventually bought the child in Lagos,” Oyeyemi quoted the suspect to have said.
He said the acting Commissioner of Police, DCP Babakura Muhammed, had directed that the suspect be transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department for further investigation and possible recovery of the baby.
