A man has been arrested by the Ogun State Police Command for allegedly trafficking his wife and two-year-old son to Mali.
Abimbola Oyeyemi, the state’s police public relations officer, identified the suspect as Kingsley Essien.
He was apprehended after selling his son for N600,000 and fleeing the country with his wife for prostitution.
“The suspect was arrested after his wife, Bright Essien, reported to Agbara divisional headquarters that sometime in October 2021, her husband, Kingsley Essien, informed her that he had secured a job for her in Bamako, Mali, and that he has assisted many people to that country for greener pastures before,” read part of the statement released on Thursday.
“She went on to say that because she was married, she didn’t suspect anything until she arrived in Mali and discovered she had been sold to a human trafficker cartel led by a woman for one million four hundred thousand naira.”
The suspect’s wife was forced into prostitution in Mali, according to Oyeyemi, but she later found her way to the Nigerian embassy in Bamako, where she was helped back to Nigeria.
Bright discovered her son, who was in the custody of the suspect, was missing when she arrived in the country from Mali, according to the police spokesman.
After filing the report, Abiodun Salau, the Divisional Police Officer in charge of the Agbara division, dispatched his detectives to track down the suspect, who was eventually apprehended.
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During questioning, Oyeyemi said the suspect confessed to the crime, admitting that he sold the boy for N600,000.
In response to the arrest, the state’s Commissioner of Police, Lanre Bankole, ordered that the suspect be transferred to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department’s Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Labor Unit for discreet investigation.
In order to recover the stolen child, he ordered that the buyer of the son be tracked down and arrested.
