A house painter, Jamiu Jimoh, and his hairdresser/birth attendant daughter, Yetunde Osin, have been arrested for allegedly stealing a newborn baby girl from its mother.
Jimoh, a 65-year-old divorcée, and Osin, a 35-year-old spinster, were arrested in possession of the baby by a team of police detectives from the Igbgbo Police Station, Ikorodu, Lagos, following a tip off.
The baby, which has not been given a name, is two months and two days old.
The police said the suspects are not related but are part of a child stealing and selling syndicate.
A police source told The Nation that Osin, practices her birth attendant trade at her No.4, Kadara Street, Oyingbo, home.
It was learnt that on the morning of November 9, 2016, Osin helped a 28-year-old Igbo woman called ‘Stella’ to deliver a baby girl at her Kadara Street home.
The source alleged that Osin told the woman that the child was dead and even showed the mother a dead child.
She then brought the baby to her father in Ikorodu.
But Osin disputed the story, saying she found the baby under a bridge near her home at Oyingbo.
She said: “On November 9, I was walking along the road in Oyingbo. I found a baby on the ground. It was a female child, so I took it. That was the mistake I made. I should have gone to report to the police, but because it was a female baby, I liked it. That was how I took the baby home to Oyingbo. But when I saw how everyone was behaving, gossiping, I brought the baby to my father in Ikorodu, so that I could be taking care of her from there. Even when I couldn’t come to Ikorodu from Oyingbo, my father was there to take care of her. On Sunday, it wasn’t long after I left his place when someone called me on phone at night that my father had been arrested.
“I am a hairdresser, but I am also a traditional birth attendant. The baby wasn’t born at my place. I wasn’t the one that helped the mother of the child deliver the baby. But when the police heard that I was a traditional birth attendant and questioned me about whether I assisted the baby’s mother during delivery, I said yes.
“I found the baby under the bridge at Apapa Road in Oyingbo. The baby has been with me since November.”