He raised the alarm after a vigilante commander informed him that a woman was allegedly engaging in the buying and selling of children in Ifitedunu community.”
By Deborah Hassan
365Daily– The Anambra State Government has announced the arrested of a couple and an accomplice for allegedly plotting to sell their child for one million naira in Ifitedunu, Dunukofia Local Government Area of Anambra State.
The couple reportedly hail from Nkanu in Enugu State but reside in Ifitedunu in Anambra State, while Ebere, the alleged accomplice, hails from Ukpo, in the same Local Government Area.
This was disclosed by a media aide to the State Commissioner of Women and Social Welfare, Ify Obinabo, in a statement on Tuesday.
According to the aide, Chidinma Ikeanyionwu, the suspects identified as Ndubuisi Nwankwo and his wife, Temple, connived with one Ebere, to sell their daughter, who is about 7 years old, for N1 million.
The three suspects were arrested after the Chairperson of Akwa village in the community, Arinzechukwu Azodo, notified the commissioner of the incident.
The media aide said, “It will interest you to know that some members of the community aMr Azodo said he raised the alarm after a vigilante commander informed him that a woman (Ebere) was allegedly engaging in the buying and selling of children in the Ifitedunu community.”
Azodo said he immediately went alongside some vigilante operatives and arrested Ebere at a location in the community where she had visited to finalise an agreement for an alleged child purchase.
He said they discovered that the suspects were on the verge of sealing a N1 million deal to sell the child before they were arrested and further lleged that Temple is into the trafficking business with her husband Ndubuisi Nwankwo as an accomplice because they have not seen some of her children for a very long time.
One of the suspects, Ebere, claimed during interrogation that the mother of the child, Mrs Nwankwo, was the one who informed her that she wanted to sell her male child.
She claimed Mrs Nwankwo told her that she had been selling her children and would return home to tell neighbours that the children had died.
The suspect also claimed she consequently promised to link Mrs Nwankwo to a man who needed a male child because the man could not bear a male child and was finding it difficult to adopt one.
However, she later discovered that the child was female. She also claimed that Ebere told her that she needed a child and that she had been carrying a fake pregnancy to deceive her husband due to pressure to bear children.
On his part, Mr Nwankwo, the father of the child, claimed he knew nothing about any plan to sell his child.
He claimed that he had buried two of his children who died at different times in the past.
Asked where he buried the children, Mr Nwankwo claimed he buried them in Enugu, a neighbouring state in the South-east.
He claimed that none of his family members accompanied him in burying the deceased children in Enugu.
Mrs Obinabo said Mr Nwankwo would take officials of the ministry to where he buried his children for exhumation.
But an unidentified vigilante operative suggested that Mr Nwankwo’s claim of single-handedly burying his deceased children without the involvement of family members was suspicious.
The vigilante operative said their investigations showed the people who were buried by Mr Nwankwo were his grandchildren.
“It was at this point that the Honourable Commissioner for Women and Social Welfare Anambra, Hon Obinabo, who was visibly sad over the incident, handed them over to the police for investigation and prosecution,” the statement said.