A stranger has reportedly disappeared with a one-year-old child, Esomchi Oyoke, in the Ogbe Hausa area of Abakaliki, Ebonyi State

Esomchi was said to have gone missing after a stranger, identified as Okechukwu from Ushegbe village in the Ezza North Local Government Area of the state, left the house.

The stranger had reportedly pleaded with the boy’s parents to accommodate him for a night before the incident happened.

Okechukwu was said to be a businessman based in Port Harcourt and always comes to Ebonyi State to buy food items in large quantities for retail in cities.

Esomchi’s father, Silas Oyoke, said,

“On September 20, 2019, somebody came to me and requested that I should help him. He said he wanted to buy garri in large quantity and I took him to the Meat Market along the Gunning Road.

“Later that evening, I saw the man in my house. I said, ‘Why are you here again? Didn’t my wife say you would go from the market, where you had gone to buy the garri? Why are you here again?’ He said he didn’t want to follow the 911 truck and that he would go the following morning, being Tuesday.”

Silas added that it was later that his wife started looking for their child and raised the alarm.

He added,

“It was at that point that my little daughter said the man, who spent the night in our house, said Esomchi should accompany him to go and buy biscuit.

“From there, we started running helter-skelter. I called the number that the man gave me, but he refused to pick the call for more than five hours. It happened around 2pm and we started moving from park to park till around 11pm.”

The Ekeaba Divisional Police Station confirmed the incident but added that Silas displayed an unserious attitude to the loss of his son.