• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Child abduction: Making a living from others’ misery

Child abduction

A popular Bible verse says ‘money is the root of all evil’. This best describes the growing rate of illegal business of buying and selling of babies in Nigeria. Today, desperate childless men and women, go through the back doors to ‘buy’ babies either abducted or literally rejected by the real mothers especially under-aged mothers in place of legal adoption.

Some years ago, the trend was baby factories where some syndicates recruited young women who were quartered in places far away from the prying eyes of the public and their kids were immediately sold off to willing buyers.

Today, especially since the outbreak of the dreaded Covid-19 pandemic, many Nigerians just like others in the global community, have been experiencing serious economic hardship. This may have pushed  many into desperation to earn a living by all means, hence some have gone into the business of child trafficking. Simply put, buying and selling of ‘abducted’ babies.

Whereas most of such syndicates have since been bursted, there still exist some others that trade on newly-born children and their numbers have continued to grow by the day.

Although, the Nigeria Police have been having hard time trying without luck to stop illegal child-selling and buying syndicate, the illicit business has continued.

Just recently, the police in Rivers State paraded some women who were caught trading on kids. For them, it was pure business as there is a business angle to everything in Nigeria.

One Roseline Nwokocha from Umuahia was arrested with her sister, Chioma, at Rumuokuta junction in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Chioma had accompanied her to Rivers State to see the baby, Roseline told police.

Nwokocha, who disclosed that the last time she came to Port Harcourt to buy a baby, her sister Chioma accompanied her because she was sick.

According to her, the previous child she bought cost her N1.1 million and the child, she was nabbed trying to buy, was to be sold at N1million. She said her plan was to give the child to the buyers at N1.1 million.

The report revealed that Nwokocha was arrested with the N1.1 million in cash, and she said that it was the buyers who gave her the money as she left Umuahia for Port Harcourt.

“When asked who she planned to pay the money to, she pointed at another woman in the group named Chi Chi. Chi Chi was asked who she planned to get the baby from and she pointed to another woman named Aunty Ify,” the report revealed.

Chi Chi said that Aunty Ify approached her that she had a baby for sale at N950,000 and she topped her gain of N50,000 and sold to Nwokocha at N1million.

According Chi Chi, once Nwokocha’s money is handed to her, she will hand Aunty Ify’s share to her and Ify will then bring the baby.

Aunty Ify was then asked where she got the baby she wanted to sell from and she said she has no idea. She said someone called her that they had a baby to sell so she set the wheels in motion.

Meanwhile, Roseline Nwokocha was asked what happened to the baby she bought two weeks earlier and she said the baby was in Aba with a couple. She was asked for the couple’s name but she couldn’t provide an answer. She was also asked what she planned to do with the baby she came to buy before she was nabbed, and she said one couple from Umuahia were to adopt the child but said she couldn’t remember the Umuahia couple’s name.

Though, the fifth woman in the group was identified as the mother of the previous baby Nwokocha bought.

BDSUNDAY search has shown that apart from the monetary attachment to this business, the desperation for couples in childless marriage to have children is another reason the business of illegal adoption of babies is thriving in Nigeria. Such couples indulge in this illegal business despite the legal process of adopting a child, which is backed by the law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Also in 2019, Nigerian police freed 19 pregnant women from properties in Lagos, which they describe as “baby factories”. Most of the women were abducted “for the purpose of getting them pregnant and selling the babies”, the police said.

Police further said that male babies would be sold for $1,400 (£1,100) and the females for $830 equivalent to N504,000 and N298,800 going by the exchange rate of N360/$.

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They added that the children were to be trafficked, but it was not clear who or where the potential buyers were.

Sadly, these rescued girls and women, aged between 15 and 28, had been lured to Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, from different parts of the country with the promise of employment. But they were then held in the properties and raped.

“Baby boys are more expensive than girls in the baby sale business,” says Comfort Agboko, head of the southeastern arm of Nigeria’s anti-trafficking agency, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

“Male children are often sold for between N700,000 (about $2,000) to one million naira (about $2,700) while female babies are sold for between 500,000 naira (about $1,350) and N700,000.”

The majority of the buyers are couples who have been unable to conceive.

These so-called “baby factories” are not uncommon in Nigeria as there have been several raids in the past including one recorded in 2018 when 160 children were rescued.

It has been alleged that a good number of the abused children are adopted ones. In recent times, cases of child abuse have been on the increase.

“We see cases and read stories on a daily basis of wicked couples subjecting their maids or wards to inhuman treatment. Some of them could be adopted children. The fact that there is no blood relationship, it may be easy for wicked parents to treat such children anyhow. This is particularly so if the method of the adoption was not documented or did not pass through legal process,” a social worker, who pleaded anonymity, said.

On the procedure for adopting a baby legally, the applicant is required to present the following documents; marriage certificate or a sworn declaration of marriage for a married couple; birth certificate or sworn declaration of age of each applicant; two passport photographs of each applicant; a medical certificate of the fitness of the applicant from a government owned hospital; and other documents, requirements and information as the court may require for the purposes of the adoption.

Explaining this further, Samuel Okolie, a Lagos-based legal practitioner stated that Order 26(1) of the Child Rights Act provides “that an application for adoption shall be made to the court as prescribed in form 3 and shall be accompanied with the relevant documents”.

According to him, in practice, the application is not made directly to the court but by way of a letter addressed to the ministry of youth and social development depending on the state, and accompanied with the relevant documents.

“Once the ministry is satisfied with the application and the relevant document, the ministry will send all the relevant documents to the court, and the judge or magistrate depending on the case, may decide whether to hear the application in open court or in chambers,” Okolie stated.

Okolie further revealed that the court having been satisfied with the application and the relevant documents, will direct the welfare officer or child development officer to go and investigate the character and suitability of the applicant as an adopter as well as the child to be adopted.

“Once the court is satisfied with the application and the report of the welfare officer, the court will make an adoption order. But if the court is dissatisfied, the court will revoke the adoption order. In either case, the court will make an order containing a direction to the chief registrar and appropriate child development services to file the order in the adopted children Register,” he explained.

Okolie however stated that the court shall also in placing the child for adoption, have regard as far as practicable, to the wishes of the parents and the guardian of the child, to the religious upbringing of the child.

To some of these childless couple, going through the legal process of child adoption is tough, and this is forcing desperate childless couples to patronise baby factories.

To address this, they called for a review of child adoption laws to discourage individuals or couples from patronising baby factories and other illegal outlets to adopt children, revealed a survey on child adoption and Child Rights Act conducted by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).