The victim’s parents had reportedly completed negotiations
to sell them for the sum of N50,000 and N20,000 respectively, due to poverty
when their grandmother intervened.
Mrs. Ekong who hails from Mbiokporo, in the Nsit Ibom Local
Government Area of the state, told Punch that she stopped the mother of the
kids who is her second daughter from selling her children when she threatened
to place a curse on her.
She explained that when her daughter who is a housewife
gave birth to her first son, the father was jobless. A friend to their mother
later linked the family to suspected ritualists who offered to buy the
children.
She said: “I suffered to raise the children by engaging in menial
jobs and weeding people’s farm for meager wages, just to keep the kids.”
She stated further that when the children were old enough
to begin school she enrolled them at St. George’s Primary School, Aka Offot,
Uyo, but things had become quite difficult for them and she could no longer
cater for the children’s finances.
“I cry for these children each day they leave for school
without food and no writing materials in class. Now, I can’t help them. Their
parents ran away as they failed in their plot to sell them to ritualists.”
