A woman accused of belonging to a child-stealing and trafficking syndicate has told police she sold two of her own newborns and kidnapped 19 other children over nearly two years, six of whom later died in captivity.
Adejoke Popoola, speaking to journalists on Monday at the Oyo State Police Command headquarters in Ibadan, said she had been carrying out the scheme since October 2024 while also selling herbs at a bus stop in Olunloyo.
Her arrest has exposed what police describe as an interstate trafficking network stretching from Oyo State to Ogun and Delta States, involving stolen children, pregnant women held in custody until they gave birth, and the alleged sale of dead children's bodies for ritual purposes.
Popoola told reporters that an unusual fertility made it easy for her to produce children to sell.
"God blessed me with the gift of pregnancy. Anytime a man has sex with me twice, I get pregnant, and it is always difficult to abort," she said.
She said she sold a newborn boy and a set of twins last year, describing the buyer as a "baby industry" operator.
"I have sold two sets of children, a newborn boy and twins as well, last year. I sold the twins to … clinic; she also resells them to her customers in Lagos. She has a baby industry. When the owner of the pregnancy rejects the pregnancy, that is when I sell. Sometimes I get N80,000 or N120,000 for each child I sell," she said. "The clinic in Ogeere gave me N300,000 for the twins."
Popoola said she is the mother of seven children.
"I gave birth to seven children. Some are married. My last child is six years old, while the eldest is 34 years old," she said.
Beyond selling her own children, Popoola described posing as a prospective tenant to scout homes before snatching children left unattended.
"I steal babies. I will go to their place and say I want to rent a house. Then, if I do not see anyone, if I see their children, I will just steal their children," she said.
She said a woman she worked with at Ogeere Market had taught her the technique, and that she also posed as a spiritualist to prey on parents of children with disabilities.
"Sometimes, I disguise myself as a spiritualist. Parents bring their disabled children to me because they cannot talk, sit, or walk. So, I will promise them that I can help them to heal, then I will go and pick another person's child for them," she said.
Among her alleged victims was three-year-old Ifakunle Ifagbenro, whom she said she abducted during an Egungun masquerade festival in Oyo Town by offering to carry him during the procession.
"I went to an Egungun festival to steal a child, Ifakunle. I woke up early and asked a bike man to drive me to the place where they were holding the Egungun festival, so he drove me to the house. When I entered the house, they were praying, so I joined them and I even gave them money for the prayer.
‘When the Egungun left, the boy told his mother that he did not want to stay at home and wanted to join the procession. So, I volunteered to help hold the boy. I joined them for the procession and, in the evening, I picked up the boy, laid him on my back and ran away with him," she said.
Popoola said 19 children had passed through her hands in total, and that not all of them survived.
"About six children died from the 19 children I have kidnapped, but 13 are alive," she said.
The Commissioner of Police, Abimbola Olugbenga, told a press briefing at the command's headquarters in Eleyele, Ibadan, on Monday that the case began with a petition Popoola herself had filed on July 29, 2026, under the alias Orente Alagbo.
That petition, he said, eventually led investigators to a much larger criminal network.
Detectives were drawn into the case after Ifakunle vanished during an annual masquerade festival in Oyo Town on June 29.
Olugbenga said photographs and video from the event showed Popoola carrying the boy and placed her with him around the time he disappeared.
She was arrested on August 4 and admitted to attending the festival and leaving with the child, a statement police said became the investigation's first breakthrough.
Olugbenga said Popoola went on to disclose her involvement in the abduction of more than 15 children aged between two and seven, taken from churches, parties and other events in and outside Oyo State.
She also named an alleged partner, Adekanbi Janet, also known as Hosanna, who was traced to Mowe in Ogun State.
Police said they rescued four children aged two to four and two pregnant young women from Janet's custody there.
According to Olugbenga, Janet said the stolen children were held pending sale while the pregnant women were kept until they delivered their babies.
Information from her also helped lead detectives to Ifakunle, who was recovered in the Gbagi area of Ibadan on August 20.
The investigation later took detectives to Agbor in Delta State on September 2, where four children believed to have been stolen from Oyo State were recovered from people suspected of buying them.
Two suspects, Christopher Joy, 48, and Rosemary Jesse, 53, were arrested there, confirming what Olugbenga called the network's interstate reach.
Olugbenga said the case also uncovered an alleged ritual element: suspects reportedly told police that when a child died in their custody, the body would be sold to ritualists.
That led to the arrest of an Alfa, Muritala Fasasi, and a herbalist, Yakubu Azeez.
In total, police said, 17 children have been rescued and seven suspects arrested, while six children died in the custody of their alleged abductors.
They were identified as Musharaf Lawal Tajudeen, two; Greatness Adeagbo, five; Sainat Amoo, two; Taiwo Usman, two; Daniel Solomon Olayinka, seven; and Miracle Olaniyi, four.
Olugbenga has appealed to parents and guardians who have lost children in recent times to come to the command headquarters in Eleyele, Ibadan, to help identify the rescued children and reunite them with their families.
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