We
heard there are some ladies trafficked to Libya
There are several Nigerians in some
prisons in war torn countries and nobody can reach them. Different warlords are
in charge of different enclaves. Trafficked victims, who are lucky to buy their
freedom, come out alive. The Nigeria Ministry of Foreign Affairs is trying, but
one must go to Libya and work with the government of Libya in order to rescue
these victims. We can’t say we’re NAPTIP or Nigerian government official and we
cross into dangerous terrains.
We have a case of a girl that was
trafficked to such war torn countries. She was trapped in one of their prisons
for six months before she came out. It was actually a guy that assisted her to
get out. She started living with the
guy. One thing led to another and she got pregnant. She had a baby boy; the guy
promised to marry her. But most of these guys in those countries are criminals.
The guy was killed in a shootout. She was eventually deported. She returned
with the baby.
What
eventually happened to her and the baby?
When we asked her, who and how she was
trafficked to Libya, she refused to say. She insisted that nobody trafficked
her. We allowed her to leave, but I gave her a phone number in case she changed
her mind and wanted to talk. She called me often because she needed help. I
used to assist her with money from my pocket because I knew the baby needed
help. She belongs to the categories of girls I term, ‘reluctant mothers.’ She
called one day to say that she was about to get married. She said that the guy
asked her to discard her SIM card; he didn’t want anything or anyone that would
remind them of her past life. She had already told him about her past. Since
then, we’ve not heard from her.
Let’s
talk about the child adoption process in Nigeria
NAPTIP as an agency doesn’t get involve
in adoption process. When we rescue victims, our first assignment is to
stabilise them. This usually takes a lot of time, especially with the degree of
trauma. Some of these victims come into our shelter totally angry with the
system. They are angry and aggressive, depending on the degree of how they were
trafficked and dehumanised. We work on them and eventually they become
stabilised and then they tell their stories.
What
do you mean by ‘Reluctant Mothers’?
They are mothers who don’t and didn’t
want their children. Most of them are involved in sales of their babies. It is
because they didn’t want those children that they end up selling them. They
don’t need a lot of inducement before accepting to sell their babies.
Baby
sales are so rampant these days that traffickers sell and buy at ridiculous
prices
Yes, babies are now being sold for as
low as N150,000 and N200,000. These reluctant mothers see their babies as an
embarrassment. Some of them feel the child came to disrupt their lives. For
every market to thrive; there must be a willing buyer and seller. If you don’t
want your baby and you sell it, it becomes an offence.
Some
buyers don’t know that buying babies is a criminal offence
They know! There’s nobody in Nigerian,
even in the whole world who doesn’t know that buying of a human being is a
criminal offence. Human beings cannot be bought and sold. The babies
trafficking syndicate is all about taking advantage of the vulnerable and those
who don’t know what they are doing. How can you sell a human being? NAPTIP
works with ministries of women affairs in Nigeria, there are departments in
those ministries that are in charge of adoption processes. These are the legal
and genuine institutions to deal with. If you want to adopt a child, you go to
the institutions and apply. It’s a specialist field. When you get there,
they’ll profile you. The profiling is to know what your temperaments are like.
They want to know the child you’re interested in and if you can bond with the
child. The ministry will give you a time of bonding, allow you to be coming to
see the children; it’s a period of bonding. The officials will start vetting
you, checking your background. Then there are legal documents involve. If you
come from another country to adopt a child, you need endorsement from a judge.
It is because of the cumbersome nature of adoption, that some people are
beginning to exploit the gap.
Has
NAPTIP arrested someone who went to buy a baby after applying for adoption?
I have not arrested such a person, but I
know that scenario is possible. Like our Director General, Dame Julie
Okah-Donli used to say, everyone should join hands to check human trafficking
and adoption process. The state and federal governments should look at it. What
are the root causes of baby sale? Although some people are purely criminal
minded, but for others who found themselves in this, it is because of
frustration. This doesn’t mean I’m supporting buying and selling of children.
Sometimes NAPTIP will arrest a buyer, but the seller had disappeared. This
frustrates our case in court. I’m not a specialist in child adoption, but I
hope the ministries will look at making it less cumbersome.
What
about stigma that comes with adopted child in Nigeria?
We can’t run away from the issue of
stigma in Nigeria. Most couples do not want people to know that they adopted
the child. As legal as adoption is, some people don’t want to be identified with
it because of ego. Some move to another clime for a while, take a stimulant,
which makes their stomach to start growing and claim they’re pregnant. They
know they’re not pregnant, but they’ll go on social media, flaunt their bumps
and do all manners of things in preparation to the buying of a baby. It’s a set
within a subset. There’s something they want to do. Some of them will say they
want twins. I remembered when we arrested a woman going to Ghana with twins.
She was arrested and the twins taken for DNA. Do you know that the children
were not twins? They were not even born on the same day and are not from the
same parents. The children were born four days apart. But she passed them off
as twins. She wanted twins, it is a legitimate desire, but she decided to make
it happen. There was no genetic connection between her and the children and
none also between the two babies. The case is in court.
I
don’t know why Nigerian men usually kick against adoption?
It’s a cultural thing. Many couples will
say, ‘God forbid’ that they should go for adoption. There are cultural
patterns. Some men will even allow their wives to have her way and adopt, but
they’ll never accept the child. Most men, who allow their wives to have their ways
and go for adoption, are probably those that have fertility problems. And for
his reputation’s sake, he wouldn’t want to disturb the woman. Some women are so
patient and so godly, they would endure. Some men accept adoption because they
don’t want their wives to go outside and blew the whistle on them. But deep
down in his heart, he would never accept that child in his family. Imagine what
will become of that child. There will be denial in the home. In legal adoption
process, the ministries also try to ensure that the couple’s extended families
will accept that child, that the home is suitable for the child.
What
has extended family got to do with husband and wife’s plan for adoption?
The extended family is very important in
the adoption process. The husband and wife may agree to go for adoption, but
the extended family will say no.
How
is it their business?
They can use it to abuse the child later
in life. If the children in the extended run towards a particular family
member, the person may cuddle others, but may push away the adopted child,
saying, ‘we don’t even know where this one is from.’ Even if the boy is bearing
the couple’s name, they’ll one day tell other children in the family that he is
not their blood. I heard surrogacy is beginning to gain grounds in Nigeria.
How
does surrogacy work?
Surrogacy is part of the solution to
check baby trafficking. Surrogacy is a lady, who is not your wife, accepting to
take in for you. You pay her; she takes in for you. Most times, it’s the wife
that would suggest it to her husband. Sometimes it’s by artificial
insemination. The sperm donors are usually anonymous. Some men even invite
their brothers to impregnate their wives. They want to keep the secret within
the family circle. But some wives usually refuse. Some of them knew those
brothers when they were young. The husband might start giving the wife hell.
She eventually accepts. She gets pregnant, but the problem here is that the
husband expects the sexual liaison to stop, but it usually doesn’t. Instead of
allowing your brother to have sex with your wife, why not go for surrogacy?
In advance climes, if you go to
Facebook, you’ll find out that surrogacy is the job of some women. They are
very professional about the whole thing. It’s usually via artificial
insemination. After she delivers the baby, she collects her money and leaves.
There are cases whereby husband and wife are fertile, but the wife couldn’t
carry a baby to full term, because of her health. Her husband’s sperm is
harvested and her eggs harvested and then they look for a willing womb to carry
the baby to full term for them. Sometimes you see ladies that are not working,
but living large; you see them with pregnancies, they tell you their husbands’
are overseas, it’s not true. It’s just a cover story.
Is
surrogacy expensive?
It depends. Some ladies will accept to
carry the pregnancy to term and then tell the couple to give her anything they
felt like. Others will tell the couple amount to pay them; they’ll tell you
that they are the ones that have to go through the rigours of the pregnancy and
labour. The problem that comes with surrogacy is bonding. Once the baby starts
kicking, the mother begins to bond with it. That’s part of the reason surrogate
mothers are no longer allowed to breastfeed the baby. Once the woman starts
breastfeeding that baby, she would become attach to the baby.
A pregnant lady at a baby factory
promised to handover her baby to the trafficker after delivery, but after she
put to bed, she refused to sell. They reminded her about her agreement, but she
remained adamant. They finally made her to give up the baby. A week later, she
went to police station to report herself. She said that her mother that died
some years ago came to flog her, asking her how many siblings she has. The mother
had only two of them. She said that her mother flogged her until she ran to the
police station. She told police that she didn’t want to keep to the contract
anymore; she wanted her baby. Meanwhile, the buyer had already done naming
ceremony.
Lebanon
has suddenly become the latest destination of traffickers from Nigeria, why?
There are many Lebanese in Nigeria,
especially Kano State. Their skins show them to be Lebanese, but their minds
are those of Nigerians. Some have been in Nigeria since 1914. There are six and
seven generations of Lebanese in Nigeria. They are traders. Nigerians can get
visa on arrival at Beirut. Taking a housemaid from Nigeria to Beirut is like
taking a girl from Lagos to Abuja. Labour is cheaper there than here. It is
because of cheap labour in Nigeria that Lebanese, who are in Nigeria, are
outsourcing. They take a girl from Nigeria to Lebanese. Let’s also not forget
that some of these foreigners don’t like blacks. They treat Nigerians as
slaves. One of the victims NAPTIP rescued from Lebanon told us that immediately
she got there, her ordeal started. People also now see Lebanon as trending, and
so they follow others to Lebanon. There’s nothing really happening in Lebanon.
I can’t think of any industry there.
We
heard that Lebanon has mostly menial jobs?
Yes, menial jobs! Nothing is happening
there. That is also why sexual exploitation is very high over there. This is
the same situation in Saudi Arabia and Omar. There’s no general template for
human trafficking. If you follow the story of slave trade, you’ll discover that
raping was one of the avenues of subjugating people. Back then, men and women
were raped.
There
was video of a lady tied and an Arab man defecating into her mouth…
I saw that video, but we’ve not had such
a case here. The girl’s hands were tied. It is the master’s way of taking away
the girls’ humanity away, degrading them to the extent that they wouldn’t have
any say. The video offended me.
Does
NAPTIP have an idea the number of Nigerian girls in Lebanon?
No one can come and give empirical
figure on that. Nobody has gone to take a census. All of a sudden, we are hearing
noises from Lebanon, about our girls being trafficked to that country. It’s too
early to start putting a figure on Nigerians stuck there. When our DG talked
about Mali, she said that there were about 20,000 Nigerian girls stuck in Mali.
When she went with some Nigerian officials to Mali to rescue the girls, men in
Mali came to resist the girls’ leaving. Like I mentioned before at a television
programme, there are some of our girls who were trafficked in their uniforms,
young girls. They were returning from school and someone pushed them into a
vehicle.
Is
that not abduction?
Yes, it is! Some people are here,
posting pictures of missing children on the net, not knowing they had been
abducted and trafficked out of the country.
What
is NAPTIP doing to check our girls being trafficked to Middle East countries?
The most important is sensitisation,
which is what we have been doing and what I’m doing right now. We are also
seriously into advocacy. As we speak now, states anti-human trafficking
taskforce are working. We have also established anti-human trafficking at
Agege. We are also heading to Alimosho Local Government, from there to Boundary,
Ajegunle and then to Badagry. Members of the anti-human trafficking taskforce
include NAPTIP’s zonal heads, state’s commissioners for justice and attorney
general. Other members are Nigerian immigration Service, Nigeria Security and
Civil Defence Corps, Department of State Service, Nongovernmental
organisations, Nigerian Prisons, Media, school teachers, school counsellors, the
Nigerian Police and artisans. We also tell Nigerians to shine their eyes in
order to avoid being trafficked. They need to look beyond the adverts
traffickers are displaying and the fantastic salaries. Again, if you see such
adverts and you’re interested in such a job and you have doubts, please talk to
NAPTIP. We’ll check for you. There’s no law in Nigeria, which forbids a full
grown Nigerian, who has the requisite skills and certificate from working
overseas. All NAPTIP wants to do is to ensure that the person has taken the
necessary caveats. But we have a way of checking these employment agencies; do
they have the necessary certifications to employ? Who are their contacts over
there? What safeguards are in place for a job seeker? What are the safeguards
to bring him back? These are the things that NAPTIP wants to be sure of. We
don’t want our people to go over there and run into trouble.
We
are seeing more cases of victims trafficked for servitude, does this mean trafficking
for sexual exploitation has refused?
Sex comes with its own stigma. Our
Nigerians girls, who were recently deported from Libya, all denied being
trafficked. They don’t want NAPTIP to pursue their cases. Some claimed that
those that trafficked them were in Italy or other countries. They preferred to
say they were trafficked into servitude than to confess that they were abused
or raped. There’s a lot of sexual deceits and it because of our society, which
likes stigmatising people. In NAPTIP, we believe that a victim is entitled to a
second chance at life. This is why we take them to rehab, counsel and
rehabilitate them. We have also discovered that some victims, after going
through rehab and everything, would rather die, than return to their homes. It
is because of some problems they left behind. Sometimes our agents trace and
locate their homes; their fathers would state they don’t want to set eyes on
them because they stole their money or sold family land to facilitate their
journey out of Nigeria. NAPTIP has to do a lot of work in order to make peace
and reconciliation between the victims and families. If you go to these victims
to come as witnesses in court, they tell you not to remind them of their past.
If not for such victims, prosecution would have been one of the greatest tools
to control human trafficking.
What
are the issues militating against war on human trafficking?
Yes, a victim refusing to come to court
to testify is a major issue. But we have devised another method of winning the
war. We allow victims to speak on camera. In fact, we got a conviction that
way. Once in a while, we come across hostile witnesses, but there are ways we
try to circumvent it. Another challenge is cultural pattern. How come that some
culture still believes that the girl child should be used to feed the family? A
man is 50 years old and has a child who is 18, and he chooses that girl to go
overseas to work, send money and buy jeep for him and build house for him. Some
people, states, culture, don’t believe in what NAPTIP is fighting for and until
most begin to buy in, we may still have a problem. What do you do when a victim
tells you that whatever she does, that it was her body?
Organ
harvesting is becoming an issue…
In Nigeria, everyone is looking for ways
to better their lives. They believe they would get what they are looking for
when they get overseas. If you want to leave Nigeria to go overseas to play
football, you have to do medical tests. Nigerians willingly submit themselves
to all sorts of medical tests. The truth however is that among those that came
shopping for footballers in Africa or Nigeria is a man, who is linked to a sick
person overseas. It’s a mafia. The sick person might need a liver transplant.
If its kidney, good luck to you; the person might take one and leave the other.
But if a very rich man is looking for a liver transplant, are you not a dead
man walking?
They check you medically to see if
you’re compatible. The man that thinks he’s going overseas to play football, is
not really going there for football. His liver or kidney is what is at stake.
If you don’t know the network of organ harvesting and human trafficking, you’ll
miss the point. Human trafficking is a crime that is fuel with heavy dose of
deceits. Along the line, they collect your passport and travelling document and
then tell you that they want to carry out another medical test on you. They’ll
inject you, and you would no longer be aware of yourself. The rich man probably
needs a liver and amongst all the people taken overseas, yours is the one that
matches. They take your liver and that ends your life. They wouldn’t leave your
body on the road. They’ll shred it. There wouldn’t be any trace of you; after
all, you’re an unregistered migrant.
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