A Magistrate Court sitting in Port Harcourt has sentenced a thirty-one years old lady, Blessing Stephen to ten years imprisonment for conspiring to traffic one year and seven months old boy, Blessed Ini Obong Monday, whose whereabouts is yet to be known to date.
The convict Blessing Stephen who is the 2nd Defendant in the case was charged for conspiracy and child trafficking, alongside Abigail Monday who is the 1st Defendant and mother of the one year and seven months old little child who was sold at the sum of two hundred thousand naira.
The Presiding Magistrate, Chief Magistrate Felicitas Amanze, in her judgement found the 2nd Defendant Blessing Stephen guilty in counts 1 and 2 bothering on conspiracy and child trafficking.
Chief Magistrate Amanze, discharged and acquitted the 1st Defendant Abigail Monday, mother of the trafficked child, on the grounds that she was naive, lacks wisdom and tricked into trafficking her own child unknowingly, while directing that ABIGAIL MONDAY must report herself to court three times a week to sweep and dust the furniture in the courtroom for one year as her punishment for having shown remorse throughout the trial and for being deceived to sell her child.
The Chief Magistrate, however, ruled that the 2nd Defendant is unremorseful, a notorious child trafficker, an unrepentant blatant liar who lied to the court all through the trial and also deceived a vulnerable young girl into selling her child, and sentenced her to ten years imprisonment which is to run consecutively.
Recall that Blessing Stephen was said to have conspired with a man named OC, a driver and a lady identified as Oluchi who are at large, to deceive the young mother of the trafficked child who was nineteen years old as at December 2018 when her little son was taking away from her, in the pretence that he will be taken to an orphanage home to be cared for.
The 1st Defendant used to hawk groundnut with her baby tied to her back in Rumukalagbor, Port Harcourt, when she came in contact with the 2nd Defendant Blessing Stephen who offered to assist in looking after the 1st Defendant baby while she goes to hawk her business.
Unknown to the mother of the trafficked child, Blessing Stephen was a known notorious and chronic child trafficker, who sold little Blessed Ini Obong Monday for the sum of two hundred thousand naira and later gave the 1st Defendant twenty thousand naira, promising her, that her baby is in safe hands where he will be properly be taken care of.
In an interview with our correspondent, Head Legal Officer FIDA Rivers, Esther Achor-Korienta, said they are pleased with the judgement of the court as the association had a follow-up on the case from the beginning, while urging the public to rise up and join FIDA in the fight against all forms of child trafficking that is gradually eating up the society.
