An Ekiti State High Court sitting in Ado-Ekiti has sentenced a 37-year-old woman, Deborah Ayeni, to 14 years in prison for stealing a newborn baby, after she failed to appear in court during her trial.

Justice Lekan Olatawura, who delivered the judgment yesterday, also declared Ayeni a fugitive and ordered security agencies to apprehend her.

The court further sentenced her father and another surety to six months’ imprisonment each for failing to produce her in court as required under the bail conditions.

Justice Olatawura directed the court registrar to forward copies of the judgment and a letter declaring Ayeni a fugitive to the Comptroller-General of Customs, the Nigeria Police and the media to facilitate her arrest.

He ordered that Ayeni’s 14-year sentence should begin from the day she is apprehended.

The judge had earlier revoked the bail granted to Ayeni after she repeatedly failed to appear in court to answer to the charge against her.

Ayeni was first arraigned on September 1, 2025, on a one-count charge of child stealing. She pleaded not guilty.

According to the prosecution, led by Ibironke Odetola, Ayeni committed the offence on August 4, 2025, in Ado-Ekiti, when she allegedly stole a newborn baby belonging to Mustapher Aliu and his wife, Falmata.

Odetola told the court that Ayeni was arrested and detained at the Correctional Centre in Ado-Ekiti before being granted bail in the sum of N2 million, with two sureties required to enter recognisance in the same amount.

The prosecutor said the prosecution called four witnesses during the trial, but Ayeni disappeared while the third witness was being called.

She said Ayeni had told her counsel, Stephen Ademuagun, that she had been kidnapped along the road, after which she stopped appearing in court.

Odetola said Ayeni’s father, who was one of her sureties, appeared in court once and told the judge that his daughter was at home when he was asked about her whereabouts.

The prosecutor said investigations revealed that Ayeni had allegedly lost a pregnancy around May 2025 and, fearing that the development could affect her marriage, told her husband, who lives abroad, that she was pregnant and due to give birth.

According to her, Ayeni invited her husband to Nigeria for the purported delivery and used clothes wrapped around her stomach to make him believe she was pregnant.

“She thereafter went to a hospital in the Okeyinmi area of Ado-Ekiti and stole the baby from the complainants,” Odetola told the court.

She said Ayeni later handed the baby to a midwife for care after telling her husband that she had buried the placenta.

The midwife, according to the prosecutor, became suspicious of Ayeni’s conduct and alerted the police, leading to her arrest.

Odetola said the stolen child was subsequently rescued alive by the police.

The prosecutor said the offence contravened Section 292 of the Criminal Law of Ekiti State, 2021.