‘My illness pushed me into stealing babies’

A kidnap suspect, Oluwatoyin Lasisi on Thursday blamed her involvement in kidnapping and stealing of babies in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on her “life-threatening ailment”.

Lasisi who was paraded for stealing a three-year-old baby, Nimotallah Sulaiman in Muslim area of Ibadan, said she did not know when she picked the baby from a dumpsite and took her to her house.

She said the sickness usually threatens her sense of reasoning and pushes her to do unreasonable things.

Speaking on how she stole the baby, Oluwatoyin said; “I was just going to where I beg for alms in a bakery around Muslim area of Ibadan and I saw the little baby, Nimotallah Sulaiman. I reasoned that it won’t be good of me to allow her be stolen by ritualists and that was why I picked her.

“I didn’t know when I backed her and took her to my house. When I got to my house, a woman in my neighbourhood was challenging me where I got the baby from. I told her that the baby belongs to my brother who had a matrimonial problem. When she started disturbing me, I told her that I would take the baby back to her parents that night. I was heading to police station when some people stopped me and started beating me. That was when they took me to police station,” she recalled.

The father of the victim, Sulaiman Dauda who described the situation as pathetic, said the baby was stolen at a refuse dump where she went to defecate.

“The baby told her mother that she wanted to defecate and she took her to site where we dump refuse close to her shop. When she left her in the site, this woman came and stole the baby. That was when we knew there was a problem.”

The state commissioner of police, Shina Olukolu who had earlier briefed the journalists about the development said; “upon information received from the members of the area, police arrested her and investigated the case.”

He said when interrogated, she informed the police that she was in the area to beg for alms when she sighted the baby who was later identified as Nimotallah.