A woman identified as Jemilat Oseni who hails from Osun State Nigeria has been sentenced to 3 months in jail for hiring 5 children from Lagos State Nigeria to beg for alms.
Jemilat, 40, was arrested along Seme Border with the 5 children by the Officials of Lagos Task Force.
She was arraigned at the Special Offences Court in Alausa, Ikeja, for illegally being in possession of children not hers to beg for alms and for violating the rights of the children.
Two of the innocent children between the age of 9 month to 11 years old belong to Mrs Rainat Ado & one Mrs Zainab Abubakar.
The other 2 were her grand children while the 11 year old is her child.
According to them, Oseni told them that she wanted to use the children to smuggle some goods from Benin Republic, saying that with the children with her, custom officers would have pity and allow her to go.
According to the parent of the children, Jemilat usually gives them rice whenever she returned from her business.
A staff of the Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, WAPA, had seen the woman begging for alms with the children at Seme Border and reported the matter to the taskforce officials.
After she was sentenced to three months imprisonment at Kirikiri Prison, the five children have been kept in the custody of the WAPA Ministry. The other two women, who gave out their children for the business, were fined N10, 000 each by the court.
