Police operatives in Anambra State have arrested a couple for trafficking a one month old baby into Anambra State from Lagos.
The couple admitted to purchasing the baby for N30,000, upon being arrested at Bridgehead Onitsha, while travelling into Anambra from Lagos, after a tip-off by a concerned passenger.
According to a press release by the spokesperson of the State Police Command, DSP Tochukwu Ikenga, the police said: “The interception was made at Bridgehead in Onitsha on 17th December, 2023.
“The couple were travelling in a Luxury bus belonging to a popular transport company with the baby when a co-passenger observed that the mother could not breastfeed the baby despite its cry for food in the course of the journey.
“The good samaritan put a call through to Anambra Police on its Control Room hotline in Awka, which then relayed the information to the police at Bridgehead in Onitsha.
“The police laid in wait for the luxury bus and intercepted it in the evening hours. The couple and the baby were identified and brought down for questioning.
“They confessed buying the child from its mother in Ajah, Lagos for the sum of N30,000.”
The state PPRO said the Commissioner of Police, CP Aderemi Adeoye commended the public spirited citizen for his concern.
He ordered that the couple be handed over to the National Agency for Prohibition in Trafficking of Persons, NAPTIP, for more probe and prosecution, while the baby has been handed over to the Ministry of Women Affairs for proper and adequate care by the State Government.
