<\/p>\n
By Samuel Adeola<\/strong><\/p>\n An Abuja High Court on Tuesday ordered four women to remain in police custody over allegations of child trafficking.<\/p>\n The accused; Precious Silas (30), Ngozi Unukwuwa (47), Chisinau Onukwuagha (40), and Favour Ohebegeim (25), all residents of Karimo, FCT, were charged with criminal conspiracy and child trafficking.<\/p>\n Prosecution counsel Donatus Abah told the court the women brought three boys, aged 7, 8, and 12, from Imo State, under the pretense of enrolling them in school.<\/p>\n Instead, they allegedly forced the children into street begging in Abuja, pretending the boys were blind to solicit alms.<\/p>\n The case was exposed by the Brekete Family human rights programme.<\/p>\n Abah noted that the alleged offences contravene sections 14(b) and 27 of the Trafficking in Persons Act, 2015, and sections 3(1)-(3) of the Child\u2019s Rights Act, 2003.<\/p>\n The defendants pleaded not guilty. Their lawyer, B.C. Nnadika, applied for bail, which the prosecution did not oppose.<\/p>\n Justice Cyprian Agashieze adjourned ruling on the bail application until Wednesday.<\/p>\n Under Nigeria\u2019s Trafficking in Persons Act, offenders face a minimum of seven years imprisonment, a N1 million fine, or both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Samuel Adeola An Abuja High Court on Tuesday ordered four women to remain in police custody over allegations of child trafficking. The accused; Precious Silas (30), Ngozi Unukwuwa (47), Chisinau Onukwuagha (40), and Favour Ohebegeim (25), all residents of Karimo, FCT, were charged with criminal conspiracy and child trafficking. Prosecution counsel Donatus Abah […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":73075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,1386,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","category-judiciary","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73076,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73074\/revisions\/73076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}