Police arrest couple for alleged child trafficking, recover 10 stolen children

The Ondo State Police Command has apprehended a couple, Lukman Isiaka, 42, and his wife, Abosede Olanipekun, 23, for allegedly abducting and trafficking children across Ondo and Osun states.

During the operation, police recovered 10 stolen children from the couple. However, some distraught parents who gathered at the command’s headquarters lamented that their missing children were yet to be found.

According to the police, the couple employed various tactics to abduct the children and sold each one for ₦1 million to Sabina Izuorah, a 62-year-old resident of Ihiala in Anambra State. The alleged buyer is currently under investigation.

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Police investigators disclosed that the suspects may have been involved in similar crimes in Edo State before extending their operations to Ondo and Osun.

Many of the rescued children struggled to recognise their parents, as their names had been changed and they now spoke the Igbo dialect.

Some were stolen in 2022.

Four infants, aged between one and six weeks, whose parents remain unidentified, were recovered from 62-year-old Sabina Izuorah by the Ondo State Police Command.

The arrest of the suspects, Lukman Isiaka and his wife, Abosede Olanipekun, followed a police investigation into the abduction of a child reported missing by her mother.

Isiaka, posing as Samuel Adejobi, had promised to marry the child’s mother and introduced his wife, Abosede, as his sister named Ewatomi.

On the pretext of buying the woman a phone, Isiaka left her child in the care of his “sister.”

When Isiaka and his accomplice disappeared with the child, the distraught mother raised the alarm, prompting the police to track the couple to their residence in Edo State.