Anambra Police In Dilemma Over 11 Unclaimed Children From Gombe

Anambra State Police Command are currently in a dilemma after 11 allegedly abducted children were returned to them by its Gombe State counterpart, in whose domain the children were purported to have been stolen in the first place.

Gombe State police command says that the children could not be reunited with their parents.

The Anambra State Police command had, following an intelligence report in 2019, arrested three women suspects at Nkpor Market/Tarzan Junction in Idemili North local council area with three children suspected to have been stolen.

The police had also during investigations discovered that the children were stolen from Gombe State by one Hauwa Usman, on the 20/10/2019. She had then brought the kids to her accomplices in Anambra State.

Following public announcement by the Command the parents of two of the children from Gombe State came to Awka and identified their children who were reunited with their parents.

The suspects were also returned to Gombe for further investigation as a result of which they voluntarily confessed that they usually steal the children and bring them to their sponsor, one Mrs Nkechi Odinye in Anambra State.

Odinye they said bought each child at between N200, 000 to N400, 000 depending on their age bracket and gender.

It was from such confession by the suspects that Police detectives attached to 3-3 Division, in Collaboration with Operatives of the Command’s Special Anti-Cult Section (SPACS), stormed the hideout of the principal suspect Mrs Nkechi Odinye, aged 55 years, and arrested her at Obosi in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State.

The team, upon the arrest, recovered from her 16 children of various age brackets,comprising 10 boys and six girls, reasonably suspected to have been stolen from different parts of the country.

The suspect and the children found in her care were handed over to the Gombe State Police Command where four of the children were identified and reunited with their biological parents after exhaustive investigation according to a statement issued by the Police public relations officer, Mohammed Haruna.
Also, one of them was handed over to the parents in Asaba, Delta State.

However, on Monday, January 18, the Gombe State Police Command returned 11 of the children as unclaimed. They comprised seven boys and four girls and were all returned back to the Anambra State Command.

The children, including seven others that were yet to be claimed were subsequently handed over to the Anambra State Ministry for Social Welfare, Women’s and Children’s Affairs, for safe keeping until their biological parents emerge.

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