The Magistrates’ Court in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, has convicted and sentenced one Dennis Chimezie, Chidimma Maduka, who is a staff of Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS), and Ifunanya Anderson, a staff of the Ministry of Women and Social Welfare, to 10 years imprisonment each, for child trafficking.
The trial Chief Magistrate, Rita Oguguo, in her judgment, discharged and acquitted the second defendant in the suit, Favour Uche, who, the court said, did not have knowledge of the kind of help he rendered to Dennis Chimezie.
The three convicts were reported to have, in 2021, involved in child trafficking of a set of three days old twins, with the sum of N3.4 million, from Imo State to Rivers State, where they were supposed to move the twin babies abroad.
Chief Magistrate Oguguo held that the statements of the convicts during trial proved admission of the offence and that the prosecution proved the case of child trafficking and conspiracy against them. The chief magistrate expressed concerns that those who were supposed to care for children turned out to be the people who exposed the infants to danger leading to their death. She, thereby, sentenced the three convicts to 10 years imprisonment, which is to run concurrently.
Daily Sun gathered that during the trial in 2021, after the arrest of the convicts, especially Dennis Chimezie, who received the babies from Ifunanya Anderson at Airport junction, Omagwa, the police handed the babies to an orphanage home, where the twins fell sick and were confirmed dead at police clinic.
It was also learnt that the court had also visited the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital mortuary (UPTH), where the Chief Medical Director of UPTH, Professor Henry Ugboma, through the Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, Professor Lucky Onatai, presented a document confirming receipt of dead twins.
