…Calls for action against rising trend of human trafficking
As war against child trafficking and child abuse continues, the Rule of Law Accountability and Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) has said that there is need for a clarification of the law and procedure of child adoption in Nigeria.
The Executive Director, RULAAC, Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma who made the call in a stakeholders’ media engagement on human trafficking, human rights and law enforcement organized by RULAAC in conjunction with the Nigeria Policing Project (NPP) in Lagos on Tuesday said that many Nigerians, desperate to adopt children, continue to come in conflict with the law due partly to their ignorance of the legal procedures for child adoption as opposed to illegal purchase of children.
While stating that child laundering was a scheme whereby intercountry adoptions were affected by illegal and fraudulent means, Nwanguma added it may involve the trafficking of children, the acquisition of children through monetary arrangements, deceits and /or force.
He further said that the children may then be held in sham orphanages while formal international adoption process were used to send the children to adopting parents in another country.
While citing three different cases to buttress his point, he however regretted that operatives of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) who ought to be actively involved in curbing the menace hide under the pretext of combatting child trafficking to harass innocent citizens and corruptly enrich themselves by extorting huge amount of money from them even as he cited instances to drive home his point.
He also pointed out that stories abound of syndicates who traffic children from state to state namely; Kano to Anambra, Ebony and Akwa Ibom to other states for houseboy/house girl jobs citing the case of Kano kids kidnapped in Kano and trafficked to Anambra last year as an instance.
The Executive Director observed that cases of Nigerians trafficked to Malaysia for organ harvest are rife adding that “displaced women and children in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps are also trafficked by people who are supposed to be taken care of.”
On why in spite of reports and increasing awareness of the ordeals suffered by previously trafficked victims, more Nigerian young people continued to fall prey or take chances, he said, “some argued that the traffickers target rural communities where most people were ignorant and information don’t percolate while some argue that the syndicate continued to evolve new strategies of enticing and entrapping their victims and evading detection.”
Quoting the Chairman, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Nwanguma maintained that incidences of human trafficking would continue to be a problem unless individuals and other facilitators were brought to book.
On his part, the Zonal Commander, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Mr. Daniel Afokolo observed that most times, human trafficking happened under different guises among which is the human trafficking for baby factories, which he said was the most recent one in the field of human trafficking.
Afokolo who was represented at the meeting by the Head, Research and Programmes Department, NAPTIP, Comfort Sanni maintained that there awere people who had need for adoption but because they were not aware of the proper processes of adoption in the country, fall victims to certain mischievous way of income thriving on people’s ignorance believing that there were miracle baby homes or illegal orphanages.
“In this country, the Ministry of Women Affairs of each state has the mandate to supervise the activities of orphanages to ensure adoption is carried out legally because most people do not know the right procedure or they have this believe that when they come out to say, I have adopted a child, you are disclosing your inability to procreate. But in recent times, in Lagos State for instance, the Ministry of Women Affairs under the Child Rights Implementation Committee which NAPTIP is a stakeholder, we have started conversation as to how to create more awareness on the best way to adopt a child and to also create awareness on the need to understand that child adoption is not anything bad in itself, it is a way of meeting a need.
“We have had cases of people after adopting a child, miraculously conceived and give birth. We do not have a scientific explanation to this but this is true and it is also a way of helping the less privileged. There are a lot of children in the Motherless Babies Homes and the Ministry will be glad, if you approach them, they will tell you the procedures to go through, it is not a difficult thing, all you need to do is to subject yourself to examination to ensure that you are fit emotionally, physically and otherwise to train the child. Then the legal aspect of it, the documentation, the child will need to be under observation and all of that and they will monitor you until it get to a point where they will need to hands off.
“So, for the issue of child adoption, there is a lot going on in Lagos state, the Lagos state government together with other stakeholders; British Council, NGOs, other stakeholders in the field of Child Protection and Assistance, they are working towards ensuring that even the medical sector encourage people to look into child adoption rather than going through the back door to arrange some other persons and pay a whole lot of money; a girl child could go for between N350,000 to N500, 000 while the male child could go for about N700,000 to N1 million”, he submitted.
Photo: Executive Director, RULAAC, Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma.
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