The Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Binta L. Adamu Bello, has dismissed allegations that the agency abducted children from an orphanage in Delta State.
She maintained that the eight minors taken from the facility in Asaba were victims of a child trafficking ring spanning Kano, Delta, and Gombe states.
NAPTIP had announced on September 16 the rescue of the children, believed to have been stolen from northern communities and trafficked southwards.
The operation, conducted in collaboration with the Department of State Services, the police, and local civil society groups, followed years of petitions from parents in Kano and neighbouring states regarding missing children.
In a statement signed by the agency’s spokesperson, Vincent Adekoye, NAPTIP said syndicates posing as traders lured children aged between two and 10, transported them overnight, and often sold them through illegal networks.
The rescue later attracted criticism on social media, with claims that the children were “forcibly taken” from the orphanage and subjected to religious conversion. Viral videos also showed women claiming to be mothers of the children, demanding DNA verification.
However, at a media briefing in Abuja on Friday, Bello said NAPTIP would not remain silent while “blackmail and false narratives” spread across social media paint a criminal investigation as an abduction.
“This was not an abduction. It was a lawful rescue, backed by intelligence, police support, and the mandate given to us under the Trafficking in Persons Act of 2015. The children in question were trafficked victims, not adopted wards,” Bello declared.
“The saga began in December 2022 when the group Protection Against Abduction and Missing Children (PATAMOC) petitioned NAPTIP over what it described as a crisis of mass abductions in Kano State. The group alleged that hundreds of children had gone missing between 2010 and 2019, many never traced.
“NAPTIP’s investigation soon uncovered chilling details. A woman identified as Hauwa Abubakar was arrested in Gombe with stolen children. Under interrogation, she admitted to selling 21 other minors to one Nkechi Odlyne, who in turn allegedly sold several of them to Happy Home Orphanage, a facility run by one Christopher Ogugua Nwoye in Asaba, Delta State. Each child, according to investigators, was sold for about N450,000.
“Nwoye was arrested in Gombe, confessed to the transactions, and returned four children. Three were immediately identified by their biological parents. Another was later linked to a Kano woman who recognized her long-missing daughter, Aisha Buhari, from circulated photographs.”
“This trail of confessions and identifications led us to the Happy Home Orphanage in Asaba. It was not random; it was intelligence-driven,” Bello explained.
She explained that on June 15, 2025, NAPTIP operatives from Abuja and Kano, accompanied by the Kano chairman of Parents of Missing Children and armed Delta police officers, entered the Happy Home Orphanage. The proprietor, Nwoye, was absent, leaving his wife behind.
The team profiled more than 70 children at the facility. Eight were positively identified by the visiting parents’ group chairman, who had photographs of missing Kano children, she stated.
According to NAPTIP, no arrests were made that day because the only adult present was the proprietor’s wife, and removing her would have endangered the remaining children. Instead, a contact number was left behind for Nwoye to call the agency immediately.
“All attempts to get him to present himself have failed. Rather than face the law, he has mobilized a smear campaign against us, hiring women to lay false claims to the rescued children while branding NAPTIP as kidnappers. This is shameful,” she said.
The rescued minors were initially sheltered under the Kano State Ministry of Women Affairs. But amid competing claims by supposed mothers from Kano and Delta, NAPTIP moved them to a secure facility in Abuja.
“These children will not be released until proper DNA testing and investigation are concluded. We owe them protection, not hurried handovers to claimants. We are neutral, but we must be thorough,” Bello stressed.
She also issued a warning, saying, “Anyone found culpable, whether in Kano, Gombe, or Delta, will be prosecuted. We will not spare anyone.”
Beyond defending NAPTIP’s operation, Bello called on the Delta State Government to open an independent investigation into Happy Home Orphanage, describing its operations as “unwholesome practices” that cannot be swept under the carpet.
“It is disturbing that over 70 children were kept in that orphanage, many of them without proper records. What kind of home is that? The Commissioner for Women Affairs in Delta has already admitted to irregularities there. This cannot be ignored,” she said.