//REPEATING//RIGHTS-NIGERIA: Child Trafficking On The Rise

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Jul 7 1999 (IPS) - Nigeria has become a nerve center for a booming trade in child trafficking to the oil-rich central African state of Gabon.

Reports from the eastern Nigerian states of Akwa Ibom, Abia, Rivers and Cross River say children between the ages of seven and 16 are transported to Gabon to do menial jobs like domestic and farmhand on plantations.

“The barbaric traffic in human cargo assumed a wider dimension in the last decade following a decline in employment opportunities, spiralling inflationary trends and a recourse to child labour as a means of keeping the poor, down-trodden families afloat,” says F.C. Nwafor, a rights activist in the commercial city of Lagos.

Nwafor says due to the decline in the Nigerian oil-boom, accentuated by the global recession, many youngmen, who pioneered the search for greener pastures in Gabon returned home richer and painted glossy pictures of that country, a situation which marked the beginning of child slavery across the Atlantic Ocean from eastern Nigeria.

The children are lured by agents who approach their parents, promising better lives for them and for their children in Gabon.

Child rights campaigners say the recruitment drive has often been extended to Badagry, a suburb of Lagos, and Abeokuta in Ogun state.

By coincidence, the voyage to Gabon starts in Port Harcourt, Oron and Nembe, well-known departure points for African slaves to Europe and Americas in the last century.

The children, according to Nwafor, are transported in trickles, in buses and taxis to camps in the coastal towns, to avoid detection.

“Most often, bush tracks are used for larger movements to avoid arrests at immigration check points. The children are kept in camps, on the beaches, for weeks until the coast is clear and their number large enough for their safe evacuation,” he says.

From the camps, the children, shielded out of the view of security agents by beach owners, who have formed themselves into associations to protect their trade, are herded into boats for the journey across the Atlantic Ocean at odd hours and under harsh weather, to evade detection.

Despite the evasion, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has recorded some successes in its fight against child trafficking, statistics from the NIS shows.

The first major success by the NIS was in 1994, when 51 children were rescued at Ikot Abia. In 1996, two boats, carrying 73 teenagers, aged between 11 and 18, were intercepted and released, while in 1997, 150 children, 20 of them Nigerians and the remaining from Togo, Benin and Ghana, were rescued, while another raid on a building, under construction, saw the freeing of 86 child slaves.

The clampdown has, however, failed to deter the smugglers, whose activities appear to be on the increase.

“Child trafficking to Gabon is still very much with us. They are still transported from Oron waterside in Cross River state and Nembe waterside in Abia state,” says Peter Ebigbo, a rights activist.

Ebigbo, who is President of the African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN), says his organisation has embarked on a major awareness campaign to highlight the evils of child trafficking.

“Imo State chapter is doing a lot of awareness campaign and other states are beginning to follow. We are planning to collect information if we have sponsors, to give to Unicef to enable them commission a study on Child trafficking across our borders,” Ebigbo says.

The UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), which attended a ANPPCAN conference in the western city of Akure in June, have attributed the rise in child abuse to the delayed promulgation of the Child Rights Act.

Unicef Representative in Nigeria, Gbemi Akinboyo, has called for the sensitisation of all agencies on border surveillance and the provision of basic amenities for rural and urban centres to check child trafficking.

However, the Nigerian children smuggled to Gabon, often end up as slaves on plantations working long hours with little pay, while their parents’ hopes of better lives for the family, are dashed, with no traces of the agents who recruited their children.

“With no valid travel documents and requisite permits for residence and employment in Gabon, the youngsters are assigned menial jobs on which they work for long hours for very lowly remuneration,” Nwafor says.

According to him, the children become destitute and heartbroken with little or no money and unable to return to Nigeria on their own.