The River State Police command have arrested a couple, Chidi and Maureen Martins, who allegedly specialize in selling day-old babies to prospective buyers at a church in the Rumuolumili area of Port Harcourt.
They wee arrested on Thursday after police invaded the church, Grate Mercy Deliverance Ministry, located at number 3 Giwa Street in Rumuolumili area of Port Harcourt.
The Police said the suspects usually search for pregnant teenagers across Rivers, Abia, Akwa Ibom and Imo states. During the arrest, three newly born babies, their mothers, and three pregnant teenagers were rescued.
A police source stated, “A couple, who came to buy a baby boy and a girl from Maureen, were also arrested. They paid N3.5m. The children are those of Patience and Favour. The two babies were sold to the couple as twins.
There are over seven rooms in the church where the girls were kept. Maureen said she had lost count of the number of babies she had sold.
In the course of our investigations we discovered that pregnant teenagers were usually induced into delivery when their pregnancies were eight months old due to demand from people who wanted to buy the babies.
They also had a woman known as IB, who is on the run now, who would go out to scout for these girls who would then be made pregnant by drug addicts.
She usually sold baby boys for N1.5million, while baby girls were sold for N1.1million. Maureen is the General overseer of her church, while her husband is an associate pastor.
We are currently tracing over 20 children which they had sold. We learned that when a child was born, Maureen would ask the mother not to breast feed the child so that the child would not get used to breast milk and this would enable their new mothers to feed them with baby milk.”
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