Child trafficking in Nigeria

By: Mustapha AbdulRazaq

Human trafficking is a widespread and lucrative problem in Nigeria, particularly concerning the trafficking of children for domestic service, sex work, and forced surrogacy.

An instance occurred where a girl was told by her uncle's wife that they wanted to take her to Lagos, promising to take care of her and send her to university. Excited by these promises, the girl, who was 16 years old and living in a rural village about 350 kilometers (210 miles) from Kaduna, Nigeria's commercial capital, agreed to go with them. Her life at home was hard, with her parents struggling to provide enough food for her and her ten siblings, and they were quick to agree to her move.

The girl falls silent for a long time before she starts talking again, with her words tumbling over each other in an effort to get them out. She reveals that what has happened since was nothing like what she was promised. Instead of attending school, she wakes up at 3 a.m., spends her days doing domestic chores and babysitting her uncle's triplets. She gobbles down her food to avoid getting in trouble for loafing, fearing the punishment. Once, when she didn't get out of the car quickly enough, her aunt slammed the car door on her hand. Despite the excruciating pain in her fingers, she still had to wash the triplets' clothes by hand that evening. To add to the horror of her life in Kaduna, she is sexually abused by her uncle, who barges in on her while she is bathing and enters her room late at night.

The girl, who has been working for her uncle's family for four years now, is a victim of child trafficking. This is when children and young people are tricked, forced, or persuaded to leave their homes and then moved somewhere and exploited for someone else's gain. In Nigeria, children make up the largest group of trafficking victims, trafficked for various reasons, including domestic service, sexual exploitation, being used as child soldiers, forced begging, organ harvesting, and even forced surrogacy in "baby farms," where they are impregnated and made to give birth. The highest proportion of people trafficked in Nigeria are girls between the ages of 12 and 17, and the vast majority, like the victims, are transported within Nigeria. Regardless of whether someone moves 10 kilometers from one community to another or thousands of kilometers to another continent, the "common denominator" for human trafficking is "exploitation."

In most cases, it is relatives, friends, or trusted community members who either directly exploit trafficked children or procure the child for someone else. Poverty is seen as the root cause of making children vulnerable to trafficking.

Mustapha AbdulRazaq,

Mass Communication department, ATAPOLY Bauchi.