Man sells son N600,000, sends wife to Mali for prostitution

The police have arrested a 36-year-old man, Kingsley Essien, for allegedly selling his two-year-old son for N600,000.

The suspect was also accused of trafficking his wife to Mali for prostitution.

The Police spokesman, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said the suspect was arrested following the report lodged at Agbara divisional headquarters by the suspect’s wife, Bright Essien.

Oyeyemi said the wife told the police that her husband informed her of securing a job for her in Bamako, Mali, last October.

She said she did not suspect any foul play because the man had assisted many people to that country for before.

She said it was when she got to Mali she discovered that she had been sold to a human trafficking cartel headed by a woman at the rate of N1.4 million.

“While in Mali, she was forced into prostitution, but later found her way to the Nigerian embassy in Bamako where she was assisted back to Nigeria.

“On getting to Nigeria, she discovered that her two-year-old son in care of her husband was nowhere to be found,” Oyeyemi quoted her as saying.

He said following the report, the DPO Agbara division, SP Abiodun Salau, detailed detectives to go after the suspect, and he was arrested.

“On interrogation, the suspect confessed to crime. He confessed further that he sold his son to somebody at the rate of six hundred thousand naira,” he said.

Oyeyemi said the Commissioner of Police, Lanre Bankole, had ordered the transfer of the suspect to anti-human trafficking and child labour unit of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department for discreet investigation.

He also ordered that the buyer of the son be traced and arrested in order to recover the stolen child.