Child Theft: Nabbed Mum of 7, Others, Spill Shocking Details About Involvement

A 36-year-old mum of 7, Adejoke Popoola, has been nabbed in Ogbomoso town, Oyo State, for allegedly stealing a four-year-old boy at Oja Igbo area of the town. Two accomplices, one Abibat Oyesanya and a male social welfare worker, were also arrested.

According to Nigerian Tribune, the state Commissioner of Police, Mr Sam Adegbuyi, disclosed the boy was playing in front of his home when Adegbuyi abducted him and strapped him to her back. She was however caught after the boy’s sibling raised the alarm which attracted their father and other sympathizers, who ran after her. She was then handed over to the police at the Owode Division in the town.

Adegbuyi subsequently confessed:

 “I used to sell herbal concoction at Ibafo, Ogun State. I am a mother of seven. I went to the front of Soun’s palace in Ogbomoso to steal a boy when I saw him trying to cross the road. I carried him and strapped him to my back. But the father saw me and raised the alarm. The child was then taken from me. The child followed me when I picked him; I did not use any charm on him.

I was sent by Abibat Oyesanya, a.k.a Iya Bili. I knew her in Ibafo while I was hawking herbal concoctions. I don’t know how much she intended to pay me, but she gave me N30,000. I did not know what came over me that made me carry out the act eventually. I just left my house without any underwear and went to steal the child. This is the first time I would do such.

Before my going to Ogbomoso in September, she had called me in February while I was pregnant with my last child, asking me to go to Abattoir in Lagos State to steal children from the prostitutes there. I rejected the suggestion, raining curses on her.

I delivered a baby on June 26 through caesarian section and was still in hospital on July 2 when she called me again, appealing and saying that she was not trying to set me up. She promised that the secret would be kept. My mother was with me and she warned me against such an act when she overheard what Oyesanya told me. She later begged me and said that she wanted to give the child to a lawyer.”

Pleading for forgiveness, she promised never to repeat such act and advised parents to take proper care of their children to prevent such mishaps.

Asked about a child she was alleged to have taken from a prostitute and given to Oyesanya in the past, she said it was a Togolese commercial sex worker who approached her and asked her to keep her child.

“I told her I had enough burdens, so I could not care for her child. It was in the process that I approached Oyesanya to know if she had someone who could accommodate a young child and she said she had someone who needed a house help. She took the child and that was the last I knew of it,” she said.

Oyesanya, who is also a mum of 7, however claimed she did not send Adejoke to steal but rather to get her a child from a prostitute. She said:

 “Adejoke once got a child from a prostitute which I witnessed. That was why I sent her. I didn’t approach the prostitutes myself because she was used to them through the herbal concoction she was selling. The child she got from the prostitute was about six-year-old and was given out as house help. That was four years ago at Ogere.

Recently, a man contacted me that there was a woman who needed a child for adoption. That was how I asked Adejoke to help. The man gave me N50,000, out of which I sent N30,000 to her account for the job. I was to give her a balance of N150,000 after she must have brought the child. I asked for a girl child, not a boy that she went to pick.

She confirmed that she gave the prostitute’s child given to her by Adejoke to her friend as house help but trouble later brewed over the issue.

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I was arrested by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Lagos when the person to whom I gave the child wanted to sell her. I was charged to court with others and remanded in prison for 17 days before I was granted bail. The story was even published in a national newspaper. The case was eventually resolved.”

The male suspect, a 49-year-old government official, also spilled:

“I knew Oyesanya through a family friend. The family friend said that Oyesanya once had problems with the state for running illegal homes, but had registered her orphanage and knows many homes in Lagos State.

Since Oyesanya said she runs an orphanage and has papers backing up her home, I asked her to help get a child from one of the people who came to my department to process adoption of a child. We usually help people like that because after processing their papers, we advise them to go to orphanages to check out if they would see children they would want to adopt.

Since there were documents the woman who needed the child had to back with the adoption and I didn’t have time to help her go round orphanages to search for an abandoned child that she could adopt, Oyesanya offered to do the scouting around homes and demanded for N300,000, out of which I gave her N50,000, pending the time she would find a child and we would go to the home with an approval letter to adopt the child formally. I told her the child should be between a day old and eight months.”

Oyesanya however countered his claim that she told him she owned an orphanage, saying she told him she was into agriculture.

The state’s police PPRO disclosed the suspects will be charged to court soon.