They disappeared, leaving behind more questions than answers and families trapped in a never-ending nightmare. Years have passed, but for parents still searching, time has not healed the wound. Cherished photographs have become painful reminders, while hope battles daily with despair. Though the nation has largely moved on, these families continue to live with the agony of not knowing what became of their missing children. CHIJIOKE IREMEKA writes
At about 10 a.m. on a quiet Thursday morning in Lagos, two-year-old Azeezat Sholabunmi was laughing and playing with other children beside her grandmother’s kiosk, tucked outside their family’s crowded face-me-I-face-you apartment in the densely populated Old Ojo area of the state.
Inside, her mother, Kafayat, had briefly stepped away to rinse a pot and prepare breakfast for the family.
Less than seven minutes later, when she returned, Azeezat was nowhere to be found.
At first, Kafayat was not alarmed. Her daughter often wandered into neighbours’ rooms to play with other children. So, assuming she had done the same, she continued with her chores.
But as the minutes ticked by and repeated calls of “Azeezat!” went unanswered, a creeping sense of dread began to take hold.
Soon, confusion spread through the compound like wildfire.
Abandoning the pot of rice she had been preparing, Kafayat rushed from room to room searching for her daughter. Neighbours also left their stalls and homes, while young men and women sprinted towards nearby roads and footpaths, shouting the little girl’s name in desperation.
There was no response.
Azeezat just vanished into thin air.
Thirteen months later, there is still no trace of her.
While life in the bustling neighbourhood returned to normal and the world moved on, Kafayat remains trapped in a cycle of grief, uncertainty, and fading hope.
“I still wake up at night hearing her voice,” she told Saturday PUNCH, clutching her head in anguish.
“I don’t know whether she is alive or dead. That pain is worse than death itself.”
According to Azeezat’s mother, the police station at Lion Bus Stop in Amuwo-Odofin Local Government Area, where she rushed in desperation to seek help, turned her away and advised her to pray.
“The Lord will help you,” she recalled being told by an officer who insisted that 24 hours had not yet passed and the child could not officially be declared missing.
Recounting the painful day, Kafayat said, “I thought she had gone to our neighbour’s room to visit her friend, not knowing she had been taken away by a woman.
“Maybe if I had realised earlier, we could have found her. When I ran to the road screaming, a woman told me she had seen a woman carrying a child on a motorcycle, but she didn’t know where they were headed. And that was how I lost my daughter.”
Her voice trembled as she continued, “Till today, I have not seen her. Her disappearance tortures me more than death. After we reported the case, the police asked us to print posters, which we did. Since then, we have heard nothing from them, and my daughter has still not returned.”
Haunted by only son’s disappearance
A similar heartbreak unfolds at No. 6 Baale Street, Agboju, along Old Ojo Road in the same Amuwo-Odofin Local Government Area, where another family continues to cling to hope after a suspected female kidnapper allegedly vanished with two children from the same compound.
It was the eve of the 2025 Eid celebration, a time when families were preparing for festivities and children looked forward with excitement to the holiday.
Two-year-old Nageem Bisiriyu and one-year-old Dorcas Musa were allegedly snatched in broad daylight by an unidentified woman who had quietly blended into the neighbourhood.
For Nageem’s mother, Oluwapelumi, every day since her son’s disappearance that fateful Thursday morning has been a struggle.
She told Saturday PUNCH that she has battled sleepless nights and emotional torment, often breaking down whenever she sees anything that belonged to her only child.
“I keep wondering whether he is alive, whether he is eating, whether someone is taking care of him wherever he is,” she said quietly.
According to his mother, the suspected abductor had spent hours sitting casually on a bench outside their compound while about six children played nearby.
The woman claimed she was waiting for a hairstylist in another building and even exchanged pleasantries with residents.
Nothing about her raised suspicion.
No one realised that behind the calm appearance was someone allegedly hunting for an opportunity to pounce.
Then, without warning, she disappeared, taking with her Nageem and Dorcas, who had just celebrated her first birthday.
“At first, I thought it was a prank, a cruel joke someone was playing on me,” Oluwapelumi recalled.
“But when reality began to sink in, my world collapsed. I left the market and ran home, praying it wasn’t true.”
But it was.
Desperate for help, she rushed to Agboju Police Station, hoping officers would act swiftly.
Instead, she said, she left feeling abandoned.
“I wish I hadn’t gone to the police at that moment. While I was filing a report, the woman could still have been somewhere around the area. If I had searched immediately, maybe I would have found my son,” she said bitterly.
According to her, instead of receiving urgent assistance, she was met with indifference.
“One of the officers told me, ‘Go and look for him yourself. God will help you.’”
The response left her devastated
With little support, she joined her husband, neighbours, and volunteers in a frantic search that stretched for hours and covered vast parts of Lagos.
“We searched everywhere: Monkey Village, Kirikiri, Apapa, Liverpool, Mazamaza, Satellite Town, Abule Ado, Iyana-Iba, and Okokomaiko. Up till now, we have found nothing,” she said.
The distraught mother said a female police officer later visited their home that evening. But instead of bringing comfort or reassurance, she deepened the family’s distress.
“She came shouting, ‘Where are those foolish people disturbing the police? Where are the parents of those children? Where are those mad people? Let them come out!’ Adegoke recalled.
“When I came out, she said, ‘Let’s go. I hope you have transport fare because I’m not paying yours. I can’t even pay mine. I’ll take a separate bike.’”
The grieving mother said she ended up paying both her own transport fare and that of the officer back to the station, where no meaningful strategy to recover the children was put in place.
To this moment, Nageem and the other toddler have still not returned home, leaving their parents trapped in a painful cycle of uncertainty and grief.
Meanwhile, their disappearance did little to interrupt the festivity. Life continued. Yet for their families, time stood still.
Like thousands of other missing persons across Nigeria, the children seemingly vanished without a trace.
According to figures from the International Committee of the Red Cross, more than 25,000 people were reported missing in Nigeria as of 2025, including over 14,000 children.
Child disappearances and trafficking
Across Nigeria, an alarming pattern is emerging. Children are disappearing from homes, streets, schools, markets, and playgrounds, often in broad daylight.
In many cases, families complain of delayed responses from authorities and the absence of a coordinated national effort to find missing children.
An investigation by Saturday PUNCH uncovered significant gaps in Nigeria’s response to missing children cases, including delayed police action, poor record-keeping, weak border monitoring, and the absence of a publicly accessible, centralised database for missing persons.
Interviews with families, police officers, child protection experts, lawyers, and trafficking survivors reveal a system struggling to confront what many experts describe as a growing national emergency.
Although reliable national statistics on missing children are difficult to obtain, internal documents reviewed by our correspondent from child-focused non-governmental organisations, as well as interviews with police sources in Lagos, Anambra, Delta, Kano, and the Federal Capital Territory, suggest that the scale of the problem is significantly underreported.
According to figures provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross, 64,000 cases of disappeared persons have been reported across Africa.
The organisation said more than 25,000 people have been reported missing in Nigeria, with almost 14,000, more than half of them, being children.
The ICRC noted that while documented cases of missing persons continue to rise, the actual figures are likely much higher.
The Head of Delegation of the ICRC in Nigeria, Yann Bonzon, said, “Sadly, the almost 14,000 children registered do not capture the full scope of this often-neglected and tragic humanitarian issue. There is no doubt that there are more children whose fate remains unknown.”
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, Nigeria remains one of Africa’s major source, transit, and destination countries for human trafficking, including child trafficking for domestic labour, sexual exploitation, forced street begging, illegal adoption, and ritual-related crimes.
Similarly, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime stated that trafficking in persons, a form of modern-day slavery, became increasingly visible in Nigeria in the 1980s and gained prominence in national and international discourse in the late 1990s.
The agency noted that Nigeria has since been classified as a source, transit, and destination country for trafficking in persons, with women and children, among the most vulnerable groups, trafficked both within and outside the country for economic and sexual exploitation.
“Nigerian women, girls, and boys are trafficked in large numbers to North Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Europe, particularly Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Norway, and in smaller numbers to the United States and parts of Asia for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude.
“Women, girls, and boys are trafficked from neighbouring countries such as Chad, Niger, Benin, Togo, and Ghana into Nigeria for begging, prostitution, domestic servitude, labour exploitation, and use in armed conflict.
“It is estimated that between 750,000 and one million persons are trafficked annually in Nigeria. More than 75 per cent are trafficked across states, 23 per cent within states, while two per cent are trafficked outside the country,” the agency stated.
Poor response time worsens recovery outcomes
Findings by Saturday PUNCH indicate that one of the biggest obstacles to recovering missing children in Nigeria is the loss of critical time in the immediate aftermath of a disappearance.
Experts say the first few hours after a child goes missing are often crucial.
Yet families interviewed across several states said those vital hours were routinely lost to bureaucratic delays, dismissive attitudes, poor documentation, and the absence of a national child-alert system.
Several families whose children disappeared between 2023 and 2026 described a recurring pattern of police inaction that they believe reduced the chances of locating their children quickly.
Of the families interviewed by our correspondent, six alleged that officers initially refused to open missing persons’ files, insisting that 24 hours had not elapsed since the disappearance.
Three families said they were told to conduct their own searches before returning to the station. Two said they were asked to come back after 24 hours, while another two claimed officers simply advised them to pray.
Dorcas’s mother recounted a similar experience. She alleged that instead of receiving urgent assistance, she was insulted and blamed for her daughter’s disappearance.
According to her, she rushed to the police station shortly after receiving information that a woman had been seen riding away on a commercial motorcycle with two children.
Rather than acting immediately on the lead, she claimed officers shouted at her and criticised her for what they described as negligence, leaving her feeling abandoned at one of the most vulnerable moments of her life.
“I thought the first and most appropriate thing to do at this point was to get to the police, who have wider networks they can use to stop them. All they needed to do was spread radio messages and communicate with other police officers at different checkpoints, but they dismissed me, telling me it was not up to 24 hours.
“They asked me to go and start looking for her. At first, they didn’t even allow us to enter the police station to make any entry. It was after a senior citizen called the station that they allowed me to make a statement.
“I believe that all the while we were wasting at the station, if the police had done the needful, we would have captured the woman and rescued my only daughter,” she said.
A security and safety expert, Joe Obusah, said those first hours are often the most critical if positive outcomes are to be achieved.
He explained that with a police radio message, information could be quickly circulated across the state, increasing the chances that any suspicious movement would be intercepted.
“But when this is not done, I am afraid the outcome might be marred,” he said.
‘No dedicated missing children unit in police commands’
At Agboju Police Division in Old Ojo, Lagos, visited by Saturday PUNCH, a visibly distressed father who reported a missing two-year-old was initially told by an officer at the counter to “check with neighbours first.”
The officers only began documentation after Saturday PUNCH intervened in the matter, allowing him to formally make a statement.
A senior police officer at the station, who is familiar with missing children investigations, admitted that many stations lack training and operational resources to handle such cases effectively.
“We are overwhelmed,” the officer said on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak publicly.
“There is no dedicated missing children unit in most commands. Sometimes officers treat these cases like domestic disputes until it becomes obvious the child has been trafficked,” the officer added.
He, however, noted that the police had intensified efforts to combat child trafficking and urged citizens to report cases promptly.
“The Nigeria Police Force remains committed to protecting lives and property. Any officer found negligent in handling missing persons complaints will face disciplinary procedures,” he said.
But for many families, such assurances come too late.
Missing records work against recovery
One of the most disturbing findings of this investigation is the absence of a unified missing children alert system in Nigeria.
Saturday PUNCH reports that, unlike countries with nationwide Amber Alert-style emergency systems, Nigeria still relies largely on fragmented police communication and social media appeals.
Several police divisions visited by our correspondent, including Festac, Oshodi, and Agboju, still maintain missing persons records in handwritten ledgers.
At one station, officers struggled to retrieve files for cases reported less than a year earlier. A similar situation was observed in Nageem’s case, where the officer who initially took his mother’s statement could no longer recall the file. The case appeared to have been effectively forgotten.
In another station, photographs and posters of missing children were found loosely stacked rather than properly displayed or documented.
Child rights lawyer Emeka Ndukwe described the situation as institutional failure, saying that in the absence of accessible records or visible documentation, little or no sustained action is taken on such cases.
“The Child Rights Act guarantees protection and prioritises the best interests of children, but implementation remains disastrously weak,” he said.
The lawyer noted that Nigeria enacted the Child Rights Act in 2003, incorporating principles from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.
However, enforcement varies significantly across states.
“There must be consequences for negligence. When authorities fail to act swiftly in missing child cases, evidence disappears, and recovery chances reduce drastically,” Ndukwe added.
A security analyst, Kabiru Adamu, said weak inter-agency coordination enables criminal syndicates to thrive.
“They exploit gaps between the police, immigration, welfare services, and local intelligence systems. Nigeria lacks an integrated national child protection framework with real-time data sharing,” he said.
Adamu warned that economic instability and rising urban poverty are increasing children’s vulnerability to disappearance.
Rising child disappearance cases
Investigators and child rights groups say child disappearances in Nigeria is driven by multiple underground economies, including forced domestic labour, street begging syndicates, illegal adoption networks, sexual exploitation, organ trafficking allegations, and ritual-related crimes.
A case linked to ritual killing was recorded on March 26, 2025, when the Rivers State Police Command reported how two children were lured and killed for ritual purposes in the state.
The victims, Chizaram Onuche and Chidinma Onuche, both seven years old and siblings, were killed and dismembered for money rituals.
The spokesperson for the command, Grace Iringe-Koko, confirmed the incident in a statement issued in Port Harcourt, saying operatives of the Anti-Kidnapping Unit arrested the suspects.
She said Aniekan Uko, 27, a native of Akwa Ibom State, lured the children to an uncompleted building in the Second Pipeline area of Rukpokwu, Port Harcourt, where he drugged them.
“After sedating them with a drink known as Black Bullet, he proceeded to slaughter and dismember them, collecting their blood in a bottle,” Iringe-Koko said.
The Superintendent of Police added that the suspect later confessed, stating he was introduced to ritual killings by a native doctor who had previously performed similar acts for clients.
Saturday PUNCH further gathered that child traffickers often target illegal adoption homes and orphanages operating under the guise of maternity and childcare facilities.
Recently, the Edo State Government arrested one Grace Uwadia for allegedly operating an illegal orphanage, “Uwadia Children Home,” in Afuze, Owan East Local Government Area.
The Commissioner for Women Affairs and Social Development, Eugenia Abdallah, confirmed the arrest, saying it followed an alleged adoption scam.
She said Uwadia had been handed over to the Edo State Police Command for investigation and prosecution, while ministry officials began efforts to identify similar illegal facilities across the state.
According to her, the case was triggered by a complaint from a victim, identified as Monday Akpaduma, who raised concerns after noticing irregularities in an adoption process.
A senior ministry official, who requested anonymity due to lack of authorisation to speak, said Akpaduma alleged he initially applied to adopt a child through the orphanage and paid N250,000 as a processing fee.
“After prolonged delays, he was allegedly informed that the adoption fee had been increased to N2 million by the ministry, a claim that raised suspicion and prompted him to report the matter,” the official said.
Findings show that illegal adoption practices are contributing significantly to rising cases of child theft and disappearance.
Saturday PUNCH’s investigation further revealed that child trafficking has evolved into an international criminal enterprise, with desperate childless couples from Europe travelling to Nigeria, where children are allegedly promised and sold as abandoned or unwanted.
As far back as 2012, a United Kingdom judge raised concerns over the growing number of British couples entangled in Nigeria’s baby-selling scams, with traffickers exploiting their desperation to have children.
The Nigerian government, which has faced criticism for not doing enough to curb the trade, has since established institutions aimed at addressing the issue.
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