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EMMANUEL NEBAPO, the 28-year-old unemployed man who attempted to sell his four-year-old son for GH�9,000 apparently for ritual purposes, has been jailed by the Fiapre Circuit Court. The court, presided over by Benjamin Osei Yaw, on Friday sentenced the convict to 10 years� imprisonment with hard labour after the convict pleaded guilty to the charge of human trafficking by offering his son for sale to a Sunyani-based popular contractor, Evans Peprah Tabiri, for GH�9,000. The court also ordered that the four-year-old victim, David Nebapo, be lodged with the Social Welfare Department while the police made efforts to trace the whereabouts of the biological mother and hand him over to her. The convict, a father of four, prior to his sentencing, pleaded guilty to the offence and pleaded with the judge to be lenient with him because he did not know what made him attempt selling his own son, and based on his own plea, the judge convicted him. The facts of the case were that the complainant, Evans Peprah Tabiri, a contractor in Sunyani, reported to the police on December 3 that he was in his Airport residence in Sunyani trimming his flowers when the convict popped up and introduced himself as Emmanuel Nebapo from Chiraa and asked him (the complainant) for a job. The complainant, according to the prosecutor, Chief Superintendent Frederick Kwaku Adjei, told the convict that he had no job to offer him. The convict then told the complainant that he had something to discuss with him, but he (Nebapo) was afraid to do so. However, the complainant urged him to discuss his problems with him. The convict then informed the complainant that he had a four-year-old son whom he was offering for sale and wanted to know if the complainant was interested in buying him. According to the prosecutor, the complainant told the convict that he was not into that business and quickly informed the police about it. The police advised him to feign interest in the offer in order to save the life of the little boy. The two agreed on a whopping amount of GH�9,000 and the convict was asked to return on December 7 with the child to collect the money. On the said day, the police laid ambush around the house of the complainant and when the convict popped up with the child around 7:30 p.m., the police grabbed him and rescued the child. In the preliminary interrogations, the convict confessed to the offence and said he was facing serious financial difficulties and decided to sell one of his children in order to get more money to take care of the other children.