A Magistrate Court sitting in Port Harcourt has sentenced one Decene Akinmetonibi to nineteen years imprisonment on three-count charges of conspiracy, unlawful adoption and trafficking of a three-year-old boy, Opele Honest, who is yet to be found.
In her Judgement, Chief Magistrate Rita Ogugua held that the accused Akinmetonibi who is from Abua Odual Local Government Area of Rivers State actually stole the three-year-old boy belonging to one Honest Eke and sold him to a woman identified as Ezenwanyi in Abia State at the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand naira.
The Court held that the prosecution proved that Decene Akinmetonibi and others now at large conspired and stole the child from a community in Abua Odual and proceeded to Eleme Local Government area where the child was sold at the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand naira, which is against the Provision of Child Right Act and Rivers State Child Right Protection Act.
Chief Magistrate Ogugua further ruled that the prosecution proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt on the three-count charge against the accused and thereby sentenced her to five years on count one, seven years on count two and seven years on count three, which is to run concurrently.
Speaking to our correspondent, the father of the trafficked Child, Honest Eke, expressed satisfaction at the court judgement despite his son not being found, while describing the judgement as justice well served.
