The Nigerian Child Rights Law 2003 specifically prohibits the sale or procurement of a child but in the world 31-year-old Gideon Ani lives in, no such law exists.
Ani, an unemployed indigene of Abia State, who is currently being quizzed by investigators at the Department of Criminal Investigation, Yaba, Lagos had just had his first child, a boy, from his second wife, 23-year-old Joy.
His first wife, Victoria had no child yet.
If one expected that Ani’s newborn son would be a bundle of joy for him and his family, one would be right. Unfortunately, the joy that came to Ani’s heart was for a totally different reason.
“I am jobless, I had no money and was suffering along with my family. Then a strange thought entered my mind,” he told police investigators.
Ani’s strange thought was not about urgently looking for a job to take care of his family and the new addition; neither was it about obtaining a loan that could help him resuscitate his business.
He had found a way out of his dire financial troubles – looking for a buyer for his son.
“I thought about it for a while, and I realised that since the baby was mine, I could do whatever I wanted with him,” he told the police
But Ani realised he could not broker the deal alone and thought about the closest person he could share such a strange thought with – his first wife.
Victoria, an Ebonyi State indigene, who had been married to her husband without a child for more than three years, instantly jumped at the idea.
She was saddled with the responsibility of finding a buyer.
A police source who was privy to the case, told our correspondent that Victoria found a buyer who agreed to pay N500,000 for the baby.
“The husband brought Joy from Abia State and lodged her at a motel in Orile area of Lagos. He took the baby from her under the guise of taking the baby to the clinic for treatment,” the source said.
Our correspondent learnt that if not for the employees of the motel, Joy would have died in the room in which she was lodged.
It was learnt that in order to ensure Joy did not venture out of the motel, her husband locked her in when he left with the baby.
She was only rescued four days later, when a motel employee who was concerned that the room had not been opened for a while, asked a floor manager to unlock the door.
“By the time they found the woman, she could not even speak properly anymore, she was too weak. She had no phone with her. She had not eaten for a long time,” the police said.
It was after Joy was stabilised that she managed to narrate what had happened and gave information on how her husband could be found by the police from the Orile division.
Our police source said, “We eventually found him and he also led us to where we arrested his first wife. The woman told us that she only agreed with the husband after he pressured her to go along with the plan.
“The first thing the man said was that he only gave the child out since it was his to give and that he did not actually collect money. But we later learnt that he gave him out N500,000 was agreed.”
The police have arrested the buyer of the baby, whose identity is still being kept secret.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that Ani and his first wife still maintain that no money had exchanged hands but the investigators at the DCI told Saturday PUNCH that whether they had been paid for the baby or not, they would get to the root of the matter.
When our correspondent visited the DCI, it was learnt that investigators had prevented journalists from photographing the suspects.
A relations of the first wife, whom our correspondent saw at the department explained that he could not comment as efforts were being made by their families to settle the issue.
The spokesperson for the Lagos State Police Command, Mr. Kenneth Nwosu, told Saturday PUNCH that the baby had been recovered unharmed and reunited with his mother.
Sale of children by parents now a trend
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