Published 4th Apr, 2024

By Daniel Ojukwu

The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has filed a one-count human trafficking charge against Deborah Ogo, the founder of Arrows of God Orphanage Home.

Chukwujekwu Asogwa, NAPTIP’s Anambra State Command Head of Legal and Prosecution Unit, disclosed this to FIJ on Wednesday.

He said the agency filed the charge at the Federal High Court, Awka Judicial Division, and got an April 11, 2024 arraignment date.

This follows FIJ’s August 2023 undercover investigation exposing how the orphanage sold babies for cash.

For 19 months, ‘Fisayo Soyombo, the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of FIJ, had studied, trailed, investigated and eventually penetrated the orphanage after receiving a tip-off in December 2021 that one baby at Arrows of God cost N1.5 million. He eventually bought his in July 2023 for N2 million.

The investigation uncovered how Arrows of God, one of Nigeria’s biggest orphanages, had been selling babies under the table in exchange for cash. Notably, the orphanage is owned by Rev. Lt. Col. D. C. Ogo, an ordained Minister, a former Principal of the Nigerian Army School of Nursing and Midwifery, a former Chief Matron, and a retired Army Colonel.

After FIJ released the story on Wednesday, August 10, 2023, and followed it up with a documentary the following day, NAPTIP took custody of the baby sold to FIJ, while officials of the police and the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development arrested a staff of the Ajah headquarters of the orphanage.

The authorities also sealed all four outlets of the orphanage in Lagos, an action that was soon reciprocated in Anambra State with the sealing off of the Anambra outlet of the orphanage by the state’s Ministry of Youth and Social Development.

WATCH: DOCUMENTARY ARROWS OF GOD

Subsequently, in October, Chidinma Ikeanyionwu, Obinabo’s media aide to Ify Obinabo, the Anambra State commissioner for women and social welfare, confirmed in a statement released on the ministry’s Facebook account that Ogo had been arrested and handed over to NAPTIP.

Relaying the latest development to FIJ, Asogwa said, “NAPTIP has frozen the Arrows of God Orphanage’s Zenith Bank account after Justice Nnamdi Dimgba of the Federal High Court in Awka granted an order in that regard on March 13, 2024.

“NAPTIP also filed a one-count charge against Ogo Chinwe Clara Deborah for buying or selling of human beings for any purpose.”

He said the charge preferred against her was brought under Section 21 of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act, 2015.

NAPTIP filed it on March 19, 2024.

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