An Akwa Ibom State High Court, sitting in Uyo, the State capital, on Thursday, sentenced one Monday Joshua Okon, 36, father of two to death.
He was sentenced for kidnapping a three-year-old pupil in her school at Mbierebe Obio, Uyo, the State capital.
The condemned, a native of Ekpene Ikpan, in Nsit Ibom Local Government Area was said to have kidnapped the victim on 20th July, 2018, during a graduation party in the school and custodied her in his house in Ibesikpo.
The presiding Judge, Justice Okon Okon sentenced the condemned, alongside one Cecilia Thompson Ebong, who helped him to hold the child inside a tricycle they boarded to AKTC Park, where the victim was to be transported to Aba, for a standby child buyer.
The condemned had confessed to the police that on the day of the incident, he kept the victim in his house for three days, until his wife advised him to return the girl to where she picked her from, but he ignored the advice.
Luck ran out of Monday on 24th July, 2018, when on their way to AKTC Park, a good Samaritan saw the child covered with a cloth inside a tricycle and raised an alarm at Aka Road-IBB Roundabout in Uyo, which led to the arrest of Okon and Cecilia Ebong, who claimed to be the grandmother of the victim.
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