Justice Lekan Olatawura of an Ekiti State High court has sentenced a 37-year-old woman, Deborah Ayeni, to 14 years imprisonment in absentia for child stealing and subsequently declared wanted as a fugitive on the run.
Justice Lekan Olatawura slammed the sentence on Ayeni after her sureties failed to produce her in court after the prosecution had called four witnesses during the trial.
During the trial, the prosecution team told the court 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 abroad-based husband, that she was about to deliver a baby. The prosecutors told the court that Ayeni 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” the prosecution said
Ayeni was 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. She presented her father, Babatope Ayeni, and one other as her sureties. Sadly, after she was granted bail, she failed to appear before the court again.. On one occassion, her counsel told the court that she was unable to make an appearance because she claimed she was abducted by some assailants.
Subsequently, the court revoked her bail.
Delivering judgment in the matter today, the pesiding judge 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.
The judge also imposed a penalty of six months’ imprisonment on the two sureties, which included Ayeni’s father 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.
