Nigerian police have raided a home in the commercial
town of Aba in the eastern Nigerian state of Abia and freed 16 pregnant
young women who were allegedly being forced to have babies to be offered for
sale for trafficking or other purposes, police said Thursday.
They said they arrested the man suspected of running
the home, adding he was arrested on similar accusations two years ago but it
was unclear what happened to the previous case or why he had been freed.
“The operation was carried out by the DSS where 16
expectant mothers, aged between 17 and 37, were found,” Abia state police
spokesman Geofrey Ogbonna told AFP.
The DSS is the Department of State Services, a
domestic intelligence and police force.
He said the raid on Cross Foundation in the southern
city of Aba was carried out on Tuesday and the proprietor, Hyacinth Ndudim
Orikara, had been arrested.
“The suspect is a serial human trafficker. He claims
to be a medical doctor. I could recall that the same man was arrested in May
2011 and 32 teenage girls were rescued from his home,” he said.
He said the girls confessed that they had been
offered to sell their babies for between 25,000 and 30,000 naira (around $200),
depending on the sex of the baby.
Ogbonna said the previous incident had been referred
to the state-run agency fighting human trafficking, the National Agency for
Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons.
“I don’t know what became of the matter and now he
has been arrested again for the same offence,” he said.
A spokesman for the anti-trafficking agency said it
does not have jurisdiction over such cases and had handed the man back over to
police. He was unsure what occurred after that.
Nigerian security agents have uncovered a series of
alleged baby factories in recent years, notably in the southeastern part of the
country.
Last month, six pregnant teenage girls were freed in
a raid on a house in Enugu where three people suspected of planning to sell
their babies were arrested.
The incident came just five days after police in
nearby Imo State freed 17 pregnant girls and 11 small children from a home in
the town of Umuaka.
The girls, aged between 14 and 17, said they had been impregnated by a 23-year-old man who is currently in custody. The owner of
the building is on the run.
source: pmnews
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