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Child Trafficking in Plateau State: Who is to be blamed?

Syndicates often capitalise on parents and guardians’ vulnerability, gullibility and financial difficulty to persuade them to release their children with the promise of a better life with paid jobs in cities

Child trafficking is becoming a big menace in Plateau State where syndicates often capitalise on parents and guardians’ vulnerability, gullibility and financial difficulty to persuade them to release their children with the promise of a better life with paid jobs in cities around the country, especially in state capitals like Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, and other major cities.

Majority of these so-called agents often pretend to be clergymen and religious leaders in order to use religion as a ruse to persuade parents to release their children.

In the past one year or so, several of such cases have been reported while hundreds of young children, mostly girls between the ages of 10 and 15 have been rescued from these syndicates while transporting them to different cities to engage in different menial jobs like house maids, hawkers and even prostitution.

Some of the unscrupulous agents dodge arrest by placing the kids in expensive vehicles without supervision, with another agent waiting to receive them at their destination.

The syndicates behind the depraved act have discovered Plateau State as a location to find minors to be deployed for menial jobs such as house girls or house boys, and in some cases prostitution, in other parts of the country.

They go as far as trafficking minors into neighbouring West African countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Mali, among others.

Recently, the police arrested a Jos-based pastor who runs a church in Bukuru and is said to be kingpin behind a major child-trafficking syndicate ring in the state, rescuing 13 children in the process.

The high prevalence of child trafficking in Plateau State in recent times has been a source of worry to the state government and other stakeholders.

Given their age, the rate at which defenceless children are exploited for meagre pay, concerned stakeholders say, is both shocking and dehumanising. Residents of the state are somehow perplexed as to why the state has suddenly become the new epicentre for this repugnant and evil deed.

Though the state government has established the Plateau State Gender and Equal Opportunities Commission and the Office of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Gender as part of the efforts to tackle the menace, child trafficking has continued to thrive with the syndicates capitalizing on the vulnerability of parents and guardians to perpetrate these heinous crimes.

In another recent case of under-aged victims of child trafficking recorded in Jos, the state Commissioner for Women Affairs, Mrs Caroline Panglang Dafur, said that the victims were rescued at the Lagos Park, adding that one suspect was arrested at the scene, while the rest were on the run.

“Underage Tarok children from Langtang South LGA were intercepted at a Lagos park in Jos, destined to be ‘way billed’ to Lagos to work for an unknown madam.

“A trafficker linked to the incident, Mrs. Manwor Ayuba, has been trailed and arrested by the state joint task force on trafficking following the interception of the children. Child labour and exploitation is a crime in the Plateau,” Dafur told journalists following their rescue.

Now, the big question is:

Who is to be blamed for the increasing cases of child trafficking in Plateau State?

1. Government

2. Parents

3. Society

4. Religious bodies

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