Regardless of the united Nations, UN, convention on the right of the child, it is an incontrovertible truism that children all over the world have continued to contend with crisis of sexual abuse, childhood depression, slave labour in Asia and South Africa, child soldiers in guerrilla armies in Africa, child pornography in Europe, massacre of unwanted Street children in Brazil, brutal attack on children at Dunbiane, Scotland and Woverhamton.
However, a 1992 United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, report has disclosed that “war on children is a 20th century invention.” Apparently, children who escaped physical and sexual abuse at home end tip as street children and are brutally murdered. Even the World Congress Against Commercial Sex Exploitation Of Children, WCASEOC, that was held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1996 and attended by one hundred and thirty countries documented that in many parts of the world, there are million of young girls, some even as young as ten years of age, are forced to work as prostitutes. In addition, the Australian Melbourne University Law Review has noted that such forced prostitution is “one of the worst contemporary forms of slavery”. It is also reported that there are over two hundred thousand child soldiers around the world.
Undoubtedly, Nigeria is not an exception to the prevailing scenario. If immediate history is anything to go by, stories abound of defenseless children moved from one part of Nigeria to another from time to time to be distributed to waiting homes. For instance, in Abia state recently, a bus load of children was accosted by eagle eyed security operatives. Most of the children were from Imo and Akwa Ibom states heading for Oron to be trafficked. In addition, authorities of Enugu state command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCD, raided a clinic in Enugu, Uzoma Maternity and Social Home, where under- aged girls breed children for sale to members of the public. Arrested in the raid of the clinic located at Anyaegbulam street, Uwani, Enugu were twenty pregnant girls alongside a suspected child trafficker, Mrs. Bena Aguocha alleged to have bought a one day old baby boy from the clinic at the rate of #340,000 naira from the owner of the clinic, Dr. Kenneth Akume. The girls, aged between fifteen and sixteen years, were quoted to have said they decided to seek refuge in the clinic after they were abandoned by their boyfriends who put them in the family way.
Beyond that, globally speaking, the incidence of child trafficking has become a multi-billion dollar business and one of the fastest growing organized crimes. With an estimated 1.2 million victims per year, of which 32 percent are Africans,
Nigeria has a large share of that proportion. Specifically, the trafficking of children for the purpose of domestic service, prostitution and other forms of exploitative labour is now a widespread phenomenon in Nigeria.
According to the FOS/ ILO National Child Labour Survey (2003), “there are fifteen million children engaged in child labour in Nigeria with forty percent of them at risk of being trafficked both internally and externally for domestic and forced labour, prostitution, entertainment, pornography, armed conflict, and sometimes ritual killings.” Beyond constituting a transit and destination source for child trafficking, external trafficking also exist between Nigeria and Gabon, Cameroon, Nigeria, Italy, Spain, Benin Republic and Saudi Arabia.
Inspite of the additional protocol to the United Nations convention against transnational organized crime aimed act to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in person, especially women and their children (2000), known as Palemo Protocol”, the recruitment, transportation and transfer of persons by means of coercion or abduction or fraud or deception for the purpose of exploitation has become a source of worry to mankind. This is besides the report by NAPTIP/UNICEF situation Assessment of child trafficking in Southern Nigeria to the effect that 46 percent of repatriated victims of external trafficking in Nigeria are children with a female to male ration of 7:3. Basically, they are engaged in prostitution (46 percent), domestic labour (21 percent), forced labour (15 percent) and entertainment (8 percent).
Meanwhile, internal trafficking of children in Nigeria was also reported to be for purpose of forced labour (32 percent), domestic labour, (31 percent) and prostitution (30 percent). Specifically, boys are mostly trafficked from the South Eastern states of Irno, Abia and Akwa Ibom to Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo, while those from Kwara go to Togo and as far as Mali to work on plantations .Between October and December 2003, over five hundred children from the Republic of Benin were rescued from granite quarries and repatriated back to their country of origin, through a joint effort of UNICEF in Nigeria and Benin. ‘This is, in addition to the fact that Nigeria has recently witnessed an increased number of repatriation of trafficking victims from many foreign countries such as United kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, United states of America, USA, Belgium, Saudi Arabia and south Africa.
Similarly, immigration and investigation reports from National Agency for the prohibition of trafficking in persons and other Related matters, NAPTIP, have shown increasing number of cases in the Northern part of Nigeria while private transit camps have been reported to exist in Akwa Ibom, Cross Rivers and Ondo states where children are transported from the South-Eastern states and forced into hard labour and prostitution.
At a pan-Africa conference held in the year 2000, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo disclosed before a bewildered audience that “child labour and women trafficking are very much akin to the slave trade era of the 18th and 19th centuries, and we must take the battle with the same doggedness that we took against the slave trade.” According to him, about one thousand, one hundred and seventy-eight women and children believed to be victims of trafficking were deported between March I 999 and December 2000.
However, there are various fundamental reasons why many Nigerian children are vulnerable to trafficking, including urbanization with deteriorating public services, low literacy level, high school drop- out rates, among others. Particularly, while women manifest societal inequality derivable from the unequal distribution of wealth, which discriminate against them, over bearing family expenses in the wake of pending economic crisis in the country has exposed the girl-child to be a sacrificial lamb. Poverty is also a major cause of vulnerability to trafficking and indeed, to exploitation. Children from poor or indebted families or communities are vulnerable to the lure of higher wages and standards of living. According to ILU/IPEC report, many trafficked minors have been pushed by a desire to escape poverty and to relocate from areas where employment is scarce.
Consequently, many parents have had to go through untold hardship, stress and psychological trauma when their children delay in making success or never gets to where the success is to be made. In recent years, Nigeria seems to have experienced a wave of international shame following mass repatriation of Nigerian girls since the first half of 1999. Its implication is compounded by the physical abuse and loss of lives by the victims. Great dangers to the health of victims of trafficking include contracting Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) and the dreaded HI V/AIDS that has no cure. Morality is thrown to the wind as mothers raise their voices against anti-trafficking campaigns by raining curses on those who would do anything to stop this “lucrative business”.
Despite the July 2003 law (NAPTIP) that prohibits all forms of trafficking in persons and protects children and adults against criminal networks coupled with the support by UNICEF, ILO, UNDOC and IOM, one intractable problem is the capacity of law enforcement agencies, including the immigration and police officials in monitoring and reporting cases, as well as patrolling borders. For instance in 2004, NAPTIP reported that 46 percent of Nigerian victims of transnational trafficking are children with the majority of them being girls trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. An increasing trend, widely reported in 2007 by the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the international press, is the trafficking of African boys and girls from Lagos to the U.K.’s urban centres including London, Birmingham and Manchester, for domestic servitude and forced labour in restaurants and shops. Some of the victims are Nigerian, while other are trafficked from other African countries through Lagos.
In Nigeria, government has sustained its steady efforts to protect trafficking victims during the year 2007. NAPTIP continued to operate seven shelters throughout the country — in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Sokoto, Enugu, Uyo and Benin City. However, due to inadequate funding, some shelters were not well maintained, and they offered limited rehabilitation care and no reintegration services. The government refers victims to NGOs on an adhoc basis, but employs no formal, systematic procedures for referring victims to service providers. NAPTIP has agreements with hospitals and clinics, however, to provide care to victims with HIV/AIDS. NAPTIP reported rescuing 800 victims, and providing assistance to 695.
In 2008, Nigeria has implemented the resolution of joint anti-trafficking plan of action on the July 2006 regional conference jointly organized by ECOWAS in Abuja with the active participation of NAPTIP, UNICEF, ILO, UNODC and TOM by repatriating 47 Benionese children trafficked to some of Nigeria’s stone quarries during the year. NAPTIP also collaborated with Togolese officials to repatriate two victims back to Togo. NAPTIP provided trainers and other personnel to assist a foreign donor to tram 34 government counselors on strategies for caring for trafficking victims. NAPTIP encourages victims to participate in investigations and prosecutions of trafficking crimes, as victim testimony is usually required to prosecute traffickers. Because cases take so long to go to trial, however, victims have often returned to their home communities by the time their testimony is needed in court. Frequently, they are unwilling or unable to return to the court to testify. Victims also often refuse to testify due to fear of retribution. Nigeria provides a limited legal alternative where they face hardship or retribution.
Meanwhile, the anti-human trafficking law recently claimed its first casualty in Abakakili, Ebony State when a 28year-old child trafficker, Miss Nneka Orji-Okoro was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment without an option of fine by a Federal High Court in the state. In the area of rescue and rehabilitation, a total of 757 victims have been rescued by NAPTIP between February 2004 and December
2006. Also working closely with the police, NAPTIP has investigated over 64 cases in 2006 and since 2005, prosecuted and convicted 12 traffickers who are presently imprisoned while 32 cases are currently at different stages of prosecution in the law courts.
In other to prevent young people from being trafficked, UNICEF has facilitated the establishment of Youth Resource centres with the support of Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and UK National Committee. These centres provide health promotion, Skill training, recreational services, legal support and information to young people. Towards this effort, two model Youth Resources Centres were established in Edo and Delta states in 2004 and 2005.
When contacted, Professor Peter Ebigbo a consultant to UNICEF, said the average age of trafficked children is 15 years (age varies, especially among girls) engaged in sex trade outside the country with 60 percent to 80 percent of girls in sex trade outside the country found in Italy (over 700 in Italy while Belgium and the Netherlands are experiencing an upsurge in number of Nigerian girls). He identified the common routes in the West Coast to Mali, Morocco and then by boat to Spain or West Coast of Nigeria to Libya and Saudi Arabia. He also identified traveling across the Sahara desert as means of transportation for over 90 per cent of the victims, others through airports, seaports and bush paths.
On the impact on Nigeria, Professor Ebigbo said the impact is on loss of lives, increasing prevalence of STDs, including HIV/AIDS, increase in violence and crime rate, increase school drop-outs, impaired child development, poor national image and Massive deportation of Nigerian girls.
Similarly, Dr. Nosa Aladeselu, a women rights activist and President, African Women Empowerment Guild, AWEG, says the root cause of trafficking in children should be examined with a view to addressing the causes drastically. According to her, “today’s slave drivers! sponsors are not better than their 18th century counterpart. Rather they are worse. Their demands are colossal, deadly enough to frighten the slaves to submission and highly monetized in keeping with the spirit of the age: hard currency earning desire”.
She, however, added that the right to education by women and children should be enforced and implemented. “To this end, education should be free and compulsory at least till junior secondary school level. Vocational centres for women should be setup at local and state levels. Non governmental organizations and religions bodies should continue in their role of creating public awareness on the dangers of trafficking. Mass media should intensify the struggle against children/women trafficking in their enlightenment campaigns”, she said.
Expectedly, there now exists a Children’s’ Rights Act approved by the National Assembly and signed by Mr. President into law, which domesticates the UN convention on the Right of the Child and African Union, AU charter on the rights and welfare of the child. Across Nigeria, only a handful of states’ Houses of Assembly have passed the law. This has hampered a uniform enforcement of the law across the country.
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