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LOKOJA – The Kogi State Police Command has arrested a family of four who specialised in luring young women and transport them to Cote d’Ivoire for sexual exploitations.
The Command’s Public Relations Officer, ASP Saliu Afusat, made the disclosure- today while parading the suspects in Lokoja.
The Suspects, Mrs. Angela Sylvester, 38, two daughters and a son-in-law, Emmanuel David, who conspired among themselves and lured Miss Patience Adamu, 21 , a daughter of one of her neighbours to assist her to get hairdressing business in the Republic of Ivory Coast.
The image maker noted that Mrs. Sylvester who has formed a cartel with her family members was fond of convincing young women in the neighborhood of a promising lucrative jobs in that country and often abduct them without the consent of their parents.
She added that the suspect, in cahoot with her children, lured Miss Patience Adamu who had lost her father, leaving the burden of raising five children to the wife, a petty plantain hawker, with the promise to send her to her daughter who runs a hairdressing business in Ivory Coast.
She said Patience, who had been weighed down with excruciating poverty that have bedeviled the family, after the death of her father accepted the offer with great joy that after all, it would turn around the lives of her other siblings, as she was transported by the suspect’s in-law, Emmanuel David, who also resides in the same apartment, to another kingpin in Lagos who delivered her to the daughter, the receiver in Ivory Coast.
She said the bubble busted when the girl discovered that the promised job was not forthcoming, rather , she was introduced into sexual business, then contacted her siblings through a foreign phone call, the call that forced the mother to demand the return of her daughter from Madam Sylvester.
The police image maker further highlighted that persistent demands from the mother of the victim without reasonable response made her to report the incident to an NGO, Challenge Parenthood Initiative (CPI) which then lodged the complaint with the state command.
She added that with credible intelligence, the police swung into action, arrested the suspects which led to the safe return of the victim.
She said further investigations revealed that there are other girls holed up there by the suspects, raising fears that government needs to do something urgently to bring them back to their families, while warning would-be victims to be circumspect with promises they receive from people of predatory characters.
She said on completion of investigation, the suspects would be handed over to the National Agency for the prohibition of trafficking in persons NAPTIP for further actions.
Shedding more light, the Executive Director, Challenge Parenthood Initiative, Eunice Abimbola Agbogun, said on April 10, 2O26, she received a report of human trafficking involving a young woman, and after the stakeholders meeting to review the matter, on May 5, 2025, wrote a formal complaint to the commissioner of Police, CP Naziru Kankarofi.
She noted that the CP swiftly deployed his men who arrested the principal suspect and her accomplices who equally are members of her family, who confessed to the crime.
The Executive Director added that through discreet investigation, the victim was returned last Saturday to the family.
