According to authoritative sources, 12 of the suspects have been arrested and six of the abducted children rescued by the IRT operatives.
It was gathered that members of the syndicate in several states of the country, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, operated in several groups, one of which involved a couple, Ifeoma Ebony and Emmanuel Onyekwere, who went around the country stealing children and middlemen, who would buy the stolen children from the couple and in turn sell to people in dire need of children.
It was also disclosed that Ebony, a mother of two, and her hubby, Onyekere, allegedly abducted several children from their homes in Abia, Enugu and Edo states who and sold them to their buyers some of whom were identified as Blessing Nwankwo, Chioma Nike and one Onwa, whose real names are yet unknown. Each of the stolen children, we learnt, was sold for between N250, 000 and 450,000.
They were said to have run into trouble after they allegedly stole two children from their parents at Tunga Maji and Gwagwa areas of Abuja respectively and sold them to Nike for N300,000 each.
The suspect’s day of reckoning began when the father of the child stolen at Gwagwa area of Abuja, identified simply as Olobo, reported the abduction of his child to the police and the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, directed his operatives at the IRT, headed by Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari, to go after the Abductors.
A crack team of IRT operatives from the Abuja office were then detailed to crack the syndicate. The operatives set to work by first debriefing Olobo, who disclosed to them that Ebony and her husband, Onyekwere, rented an apartment in the compound where he, Olobo resides with his family.
The couple, according to him, soon became close to his wife, who had a one-year-old baby.
He said one week after staying with them, Ebony, who pretended to be assisting his wife, carried her (his wife’s) child, deceived her that he wanted to go and plait her hair and before they knew what was happening, Ebony and her husband had absconded with their daughter.
Another source disclosed that based on the information which Olobo provided about the suspects, the IRT operatives launched a man-hunt for the suspects whom they trailed to Asaba, Delta State.
They were promptly arrested. On being interrogated, they confessed to the crime and aided the operatives to arrest their alleged receivers, namely Nwakwor and Nike, who normally sold the abducted children to people who needed them. The source also identified other suspects arrested as Onyinye Benjami, Ngozi Okoli, Nwokocha OkoliNdiya Kalu and Esther Ihiediwa.
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