Three women have been arrested by the Rivers State Police Command for child trafficking following a covert investigation, Punch Newspaper reports.
The suspects, Mercy Promise, Joy Ikechukwu and Ngozi Ogbonna, were paraded by the State Criminal Investigation Department on Wednesday in Port Harcourt.
The principal suspect, Ikechukwu, told journalists that she got involved in the crime in order to help a woman, who lost her four children, adding that a committee was set up to look into her plight.
She confessed that she got in contact with one ‘Mmama Ejima’ (mother of twins) and gave her N700,000 to acquire a baby boy.
Promise, on her part, said she was arrested at a motor park when she tried to put the mother of a trafficked child in a commercial bus from Port Harcourt to Akwa Ibom State.
She said the mother of the trafficked child, who only spoke her dialect, raised the alarm and told the people at the motor park that her baby was stolen from her and the crowd immediately called the police, who arrested her.
Promised added that she led the police to the third suspect, Ogbonna, an auxiliary nurse at a medical laboratory, who facilitated the acquisition of one of the trafficked babies.
Ogbonna confessed to taking the baby to the medical laboratory to conduct a medical test on it.
In a related development, the police have arrested a 30-year-old man, Musa Babangida, for defiling his nine-year-old stepdaughter.
The suspect said he committed the act because his pregnant wife starved him of sex.
The suspect, who was also paraded on Wednesday, confessed to the crime, adding that his wife always complained of lack of sexual urge and weakness.
It was gathered that the suspect and his wife lived in Rukpokwu, Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of the state.
The suspect said, “Yes, it’s true; the girl is my wife’s daughter; my wife is pregnant and anytime I ask her for sex, she always complained of being tired.”
“So, I didn’t know when I slept with my stepdaughter; it was a mistake.”
The victim told PUNCH Metro that her stepfather started performing sexual acts with her when she was four years old by inserting a finger in her private parts.
She added that when she turned seven, the suspect started sleeping with her.
