Police parade 63-year-old child-trafficker, gang

IT was a charged atmosphere at the Force Headquarters in Abuja yesterday as a six-man child-trafficking gang, led by a 63-year-old woman, was paraded for kidnapping and selling six children, including three cousins.

Parading the suspects, the Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO), Emmanuel Ojukwu, said a case of criminal conspiracy and kidnapping was reported to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) by a team of legal practitioners on behalf of a family living in Kafanchan, Kaduna State, against their cousin for allegedly stealing their three children.

The agency listed the suspects as Faith Nuhu, Chidozie Goodwill, Evelyn Ojiaku, John Ojiaku, Dr. Amadi Godwin and Elizabeth Onyemoabi, who had in the past two years kidnapped and sold over seven children to different families from their operations in Owerri, Imo State.

The complainants accused the first suspect, Nuhu, and the second, Goodwill, of kidnapping their three children under the pretext of buying them biscuits.

Police investigation subsequently led to the arrest of a six-man gang of child-traffickers, led by the 63-year-old mother, Evelyn Ojiaku, who owns and operates a private hospital known as Royal Maternity/Clinic & Child Care Service in Umuyi Akaba Ikeduru, off Owerri-Okigwe Road in Imo State, where children are traded with the connivance of the fourth suspect, John Ojiaku, her biological son.

Interestingly, Nuhu, a cousin to the complainants, was said to have last year given out her own biological son to Evelyn Ojiaku for N100,000, while Ojiaku sold him to a woman simply called Angela – a Lagos resident, for N300,000, before Ojiaku received the last batch, which she sold for N600,000.

According to the police, the suspect confessed that they actually kidnapped the three children but on their way to their leader in Owerri, one of them, a 13-year-old girl known as Grace Musa-Idris, was “disturbing.” So they discarded her along the way and took along three-year-old Philip Musa and his two-year-old brother, Paul, two of whom they sold for N600,000.

Ojiaku confessed that she has made over N5 million since starting the “business,” and according to Ojukwu, has sold five more children she bough alongside another suspect and civil servant with the Imo State Government. The medical doctor, Amadi Godwin, provides medical services to the children and certifies them healthy before they are sold.

According to the police, Ojiaku also revealed how she earlier bought Nuhu’s day-old biological male child for N100,000 in September 2014, before she later supplied her two cousin-brothers, Philip Musa and Paul Musa for N600,000.

Ojiaku further admitted giving out the first child sold to her by Nuhu to one Angela for N300,000 last September, buying and selling five more children to different families with the connivance. Onyemaobi Elizabeth, an auditor with the Imo Civil service.