Taraba Police arrest two women who posed as tenants before allegedly abducting three young girls from Jalingo, with a suspicious commercial driver helping foil the attempt to traffic them to Adamawa State.
Jalingo, Taraba State — August 2026
The Taraba State Police Command has arrested two women accused of abducting three young girls in Jalingo and attempting to traffic them to Adamawa State, in a plot foiled by an alert commercial vehicle driver.
According to reports, the suspects, both said to be from a South-East state, had rented a room roughly two weeks earlier in a house where the girls' families reside, apparently laying the groundwork for the scheme in advance.
The incident occurred on Thursday morning, when the women allegedly deceived the children's mothers into allowing the girls to accompany them to the market. Instead, the suspects reportedly took the children to a motor park in Jalingo, where they chartered a vehicle to transport themselves and the girls to Adamawa State.
The plan unraveled at a filling station, when the driver of the chartered vehicle grew suspicious that the girls did not resemble the women accompanying them. He alerted members of his transport union, who in turn notified police, leading to the arrest of both suspects.
At the police station, the women reportedly admitted to taking the girls from the compound after deceiving their mothers.
The three girls, identified as Ummul Shuaibu, Ummul Baba Gasal, and Amina Abubakar, aged between five and six were recovered and brought to the Taraba State Police Command headquarters, where their fathers were invited to identify them.
Abubakar Kwalli, father of one of the girls, told Daily Trust that he and the other fathers were surprised to find their daughters at the police headquarters. He said police directed them to bring the children's mothers for a further round of identification before the girls could be formally released to their families.
The case underscores the continued vulnerability of young children to trafficking schemes that exploit trust within residential communities, and highlights the critical role alert members of the public in this case, a commercial driver and his union can play in disrupting such plots before they succeed. Authorities are expected to proceed with further investigation and prosecution of the suspects.
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