What would make a woman get pregnant, go through the nine months pregnancy period, endure the discomforts and pain, only to deliver and sell off her babies? This question was on the lips of all seated during the arraignment of a 29 -year -old woman identified as Ijeoma Okafor, and her alleged accomplices, a couple identified as Prudent Nkechi Eke and Uche Benjamin Nmeribole at the Magistrate’s Court Yaba, recently.
The trio and others believed to be at large were apprehended as they tried to sell off Ijeoma’s four days old baby boy at the mammy market, Navy Town-Ojo, on April 17, 2012.
We gathered that around May 2011, Ijeoma who owns a mini salon around
Navy Town-Ojo, got pregnant and traveled out of Lagos when she was due for delivery. Her action was not suspected by her friends and neighbours who thought she had traveled home to put to bed, and also receive better post-natal care from her mother and would return to her base in Lagos.
Ijeoma reportedly returned back to Lagos, but not with her baby. Apprehension was raised when shortly after her return, she allegedly repainted and re-stocked her salon and was not acting as a woman who had just put to bed. She also told two different versions of stories to those who asked about the welfare of the baby she traveled home to deliver.
A version has it that she left the “few days” old baby in the care of her mother in the village; while the other version was that the baby had died shortly after birth due to complications. The neighbours decided to put the matter to rest, since there was no prove to buttress any suspicion. Ijeoma took in again in 2011 and disappeared around April 2012 when she was about to deliver. She reportedly put to bed on the 15th of April, and returned without any child.
Luck, however, ran against her when her atrocities were exposed following a misunderstanding that aroused as a result of the amount she was payed by her accomplices who besieged her residence. The argument attracted her neighbours, who had mounted a surveillance on her following the circumstances that surrounded the previous birth.
The NAPTIP arm of the Ojo Navy was invited to effect their arrest, from whence they were handed over to the Child development Act, under the Lagos State Government for further prosecution, since as civilians, they can not be tried under the Naval law.
On their arrest, Ijeoma confessed that she had given birth in 2011 to a baby girl, whom she sold off to a couple in Aba for N130,000, out of which she got N30,000, while the rest of the syndicate shared the sum of N100,000. She had planned to sell the four-day old for N160,000 to another client who had been organized by 37 year-old Nkechi and her alleged husband Uche, who introduced her into the business.
She stated that she had told her baby buyers that she would sell the baby for same amount (N130,000), since the scan she did showed it was a baby girl. But increased her price to N160,000 when she was delivered of a baby boy instead.
Wicked world so to say.
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