An Ekiti State High Court sitting in Ado-Ekiti has sentenced a 37-year-old woman, Deborah Ayeni, to 14 years’ imprisonment in absentia for child stealing. She was subsequently declared wanted as a fugitive on the run.
Justice Lekan Olatawura handed down the sentence when the convict sureties failed to produce her in court after the prosecution had called four witnesses during the trial.
Olatawura also ordered the court registrar to forward the court judgment and a letter to the Controller General of Customs, the Nigeria Police and the media declaring Ayeni a fugitive on the run and for her apprehension.
He ordered that the sentence should commence immediately when Ayeni is apprehended.
Olatawura also imposed a penalty of six months’ imprisonment on the two sureties, which included Ayeni’s father, Babatope Ebenezer Ayeni, in line with the Administration of Criminal Justice Law of Ekiti State, 2014 (as Amended), for failing to produce Ayeni and to pay the required recognisance surety fees.
He had earlier revoked the bail granted to the convict for failing to appear in court to answer the charge against her.
The convict had, on her first arraignment on September 1, 2025, pleaded not guilty to the one-count charge of child stealing preferred against her.
The prosecutor, Ibironke Odetola, said that the convict, on August 4, 2025, in Ado-Ekiti, with intent to deprive Mustapher Aliu and his wife, Falmata, of their newborn baby in their care, did steal and unlawfully take the baby away.
She said that the convict was granted bail upon her arrest and detention at the Correctional Centre in Ado-Ekiti in the sum of N2 million and two sureties each in like sum.
Odetola said that the prosecution presented four witnesses altogether and that it was in the process of presenting the third witness in court. Ayeni told her counsel, Stephen Ademuagun, that she was kidnapped along the road and subsequently failed to appear in court.
She said that Ayeni’s father, as one of the sureties, appeared once for her and told the court that her daughter was at home when he was questioned on her whereabouts by the trial judge.
The prosecutor, while giving more details on the convict’s illegal activities, said that the convict claimed to have lost a pregnancy around May 2025 and, in an attempt to cover up and keep her marriage, lied to her husband, who is based abroad, that she was about to deliver a baby.
“She invited her husband to come back to Nigeria for her delivery and deceived him with clothes wrapped around her stomach to feign the existence of a pregnancy.
“She thereafter went to a hospital in the Okeyinmi area of Ado-Ekiti and stole the said baby from the complainants.
“She then gave the baby to a midwife for care after lying to her husband that she had buried the placenta upon questioning.
“It was the midwife who noticed the anomalies in her activities that informed the police, and she was promptly arrested,” she said.
Odetola, who confirmed that the child in question was later rescued alive by the police, said the offence upon which Ayeni was convicted was contrary to Section 292 of the Criminal Law of Ekiti, 2021.
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