Lagos - Police in Nigeria's biggest city,
Lagos, have freed 19 women and girls who had mostly been
abducted and impregnated by captors planning to sell their
babies.
The girls and women, aged from 15 to 28, had been brought
from all over Nigeria with promises of work, Lagos police said
on Monday. Four babies were also found.
"Baby factories", as such premises are widely known, are
most common in parts of eastern Nigeria.
"The young women were mostly abducted by the suspects for
the purpose of getting them pregnant and selling the babies to
potential buyers. The girls were tricked with employment as
domestic staff in Lagos," said Lagos police spokesman Bala
Elkana.
"Boys are sold for 500 000 naira and girls for
300 000 naira."
The girls and women were brought to Lagos from the southern
and eastern states of Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Anambra,
Abia and Imo.
Elkana said the raid had taken place on Sept. 19 but had
been kept secret to enable the police to apprehend suspects.
Two women aged 40 and 54 were arrested in connection with
the case and police were still looking for a third.
One of the freed women, who did not want to be named, said
she had been impregnated by her boyfriend and told by her aunt
that there was a job for her in Lagos.
She said a woman to whom she was introduced had induced her
labour when she was seven months pregnant.
"After being in labour for three days, that was when police
raided the place and took all of them. The baby came out weak
and finally died," she told Reuters.
Elkana said the state criminal investigation department
would take over the case and was working with other agencies to
resettle the women and girls and their babies.
Last week, around 400 boys and men, some as young as five
and many in chains and scarred from beatings, were rescued from
a building in the northern city of Kaduna that purported to be
an Islamic school.