One Monday Joshua Okon, 36, has been sentenced to death by Akwa Ibom State High Court, Uyo, on Thursday March 10.
Monday was convicted for kidnapping a three-year-old child from her school in Mbierebe Obio, Uyo, the state capital.
The condemned, a native of Ekpene Ikpan, in Nsit Ibom Local Government Area kidnapped the victim on July 20, 2018, during a graduation party in the school and kept her in his house at Ibesikpo.
The presiding Judge, Justice Okon Okon, sentenced the Monday and one Cecilia Thompson Ebong, who was his accomplice.
Celicia who accompanied Monday to the school to pick up the child, held her inside a tricycle they boarded to AKTC Park, where the victim was to be transported to Aba, for a standby child buyer.
Monday however, confessed to the police that after the child was kidnapped, he kept the her in his house for three days, until his wife advised him to return the girl to wherever he picked her from, but he refused.
Luck ran out of him on July 24, 2018, on their way to AKTC Park, a good Samaritan who saw the child covered with a cloth inside a tricycle raised alarm at Aka Road-IBB Roundabout in Uyo, which led to the arrest of Okon and Cecilia Ebong, who claimed that she was the child’s grandmother.
Okon confessed that he was to deliver the child to an Igbo woman, 42-year-old Charity Nwachukwu, whom he said he had previously sold a male child to in 2017 and got fifty thousand Naira as his percentage.
In its judgement, the Court ordered that Monday Okon should die by hanging, while it sentenced Cecilia Thompson Ebong, a 44-year-old native of Ikot Offiong Nsit, in Nsit Ibom Local Government Area, to five years in prison.
