A bricklayer involved in the abduction of 14 children, along with a 62-year-old grandmother, Sabira Izuorah, and a couple, has confessed to receiving N500,000 for each child he helped abduct.
The suspects were apprehended by the Ondo State Police Command after allegedly abducting 14 children, including four infants. The children ranged in age from one week to seven years old.
Izuorah, who operates an illegal orphanage in Anambra State, reportedly receives stolen children, keeps them for a time, and then sells them to adoptive parents.
She was arrested alongside the couple, Isiaka and Abosede Lukman, after a missing child was reported in Akure, the state capital.
In an interview, Izuorah, a self-proclaimed retired director from the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs in Anambra State, admitted to receiving children from the couple.
She claimed to run a registered orphanage called Clarion Children’s Care and Reforms Initiatives, which started operations in 2020.
“I do not pay them. The adopting parents pay them, not me,” she said. “Lukman and his wife brought a total of 11 children to me. I stopped them in November 2024, but I went to recover the children from their adoptive parents. This crime didn’t start with me, and it won’t end with me.”
Lukman, a bricklayer, confessed to being involved in the crime since 2023. He claimed Izuorah had introduced him and his wife to child abduction when he moved to Anambra for work. He said Izuorah paid him N500,000 for each child he brought to her, and she resold the children for upwards of N1 million.
Lukman explained their method of operation: “We would lure children by promising them soft drinks and biscuits, then take them to the park, board a vehicle, and transport them to Izuorah in Anambra.”
State Police Commissioner Wilfred Afolabi shared details of the suspects’ arrest, stating that the crime was first reported when a woman’s child went missing after she was distracted by the couple.
The suspects then confessed to abducting children across Ondo and Osun states, selling them to Izuorah for N1 million each.
Afolabi noted that several other children are still missing, and efforts are ongoing to locate and rescue them.
