31-yr-old man connives with wife to sell only son for N.5m

An unemployed 31-year-old man, Gideon Ani, is now being quizzed by the police at the Department of Criminal Investigation, Yaba, Lagos, after he was arrested for conniving with his first wife, Victoria, to sell his only child from his second wife, Punch Newspaper reports.

Ani, an indigene of Abia State, was nabbed as he was negotiating the sale of the baby he just had from his second wife, 23-year-old Joy, with the support of the childless Victoria who got jealous of the fact that the second woman has a child while she is still childless.

Confessing to his crimes, Ani told the police that it was poverty that made him agree to Victoria's suggestions that he sells the child.

"I am jobless, I had no money and was suffering along with my family. Then a strange thought entered my mind.

I thought about it for a while, and I realized that since the baby was mine, I could do whatever I wanted with him."

To actualize the crazy thought, Ani confided in his first wife and Victoria, an Ebonyi State indigene who had been married to her husband without a child for more than three years, instantly jumped at the idea.

She was saddled with the responsibility of finding a buyer. But their bubble burst when a police informant got wind of the plan when Victoria found a buyer who agreed to pay N500,000 for the baby.

The informant said:

"The husband brought Joy from Abia State and lodged her at a motel in Orile area of Lagos. He took the baby from her under the guise of taking the baby to the clinic for treatment."

To ensure Joy did not venture out of the motel, her husband locked her in when he left with the baby and she was only rescued four days later, when a motel employee who was concerned that the room had not been opened for a while, asked a floor manager to unlock the door.

They met the woman weak due to hunger and exhaustion and could not even speak properly.

It was after Joy was stabilized that she managed to narrate what had happened and gave information on how her husband could be found by the police from the Orile division.

The police eventually found him and he led the security officers to where his first wife was hiding and she too was arrested.