How STF saved a 4-day old baby from traffickers
Baby trafficking has become a growing business venture in Nigeria, especially as the economy continues to bite harder pushing most country men and women into all sorts of society ill.
Looking for every means to survive, the ‘never do wells’ took advantage of the ever increasing rate of child barrenness among couple to advance their trade as research have it that between 20-25% of Nigerian couples suffer infertility.
Speaking to an expert on infertility who works with Jos University Teaching Hospital JUTH, Dr. Osita Akpata, he said, “many homes are going through the agony of childlessness with the problem of infertility fast becoming a plague in the country.
“In Nigeria today and the world at large, the desire of every couple is to become parents within the first or second year of married life: while many couples have this dream fulfilled, there are quite a number of others who do not; no matter how hard they try.
“The prevalence of infertility in Nigeria is put at between 20 and 25 percent among married couples, however, 40 to 45 percent of all consultations in gynaecological clinics are infertility-related.
“As growing incidence of infertility in the country continue to stare victims of these plague in the face, Nigerians have been advised that seeking early intervention and counselling would help tackle the problem”, he said.
Catching into this problem, jobless men and women in the country took advantage of the situation to build an industry (baby industry), which supplies children to couples who needs them after a long wait of trying to conceive a child of their own.
In Plateau State, the ugly trend is as growing as it is in other parts of the country as the Special Task Force in the State took steps to halt the menace.
In February 2017 a baby factory where infants are sold for as low as N300,000 was uncovered by operatives of the Special Task Force of the Operation Safe Haven and our correspondent had reported that the baby factory syndicate was discovered along the Bukuru Park road in Jos North Local Government Area of the state while the operators, including eight men and three women, were arrested.
Commander of the task force, as at February, Maj. Gen. Rogers Nicholas who spoke on the discovery, said the group which specialized in producing babies for onward sales to other states of the federation, had been operating for a long time before the long arm of the law caught up with them.
One of the suspects who narrated how the group works, said it has a network that is spread across the country and they usually entice unsuspecting young ladies with mouth-watering offers and in other cases, drug them with substances that lead to forced labour.
It was then gathered that some of the teenage girls are impregnated by the men employed for that purpose and when they put to bed, the babies are then sold by the syndicate.
The baby factory was however destroyed by STF and the syndicates arrested but sad tales of baby trafficking and factories still rent the air until on Tuesday November 14th, when luck ran out of two women who were travelling in a public transport from Bauchi to Lagos enroute Jos with a 4-day old baby.
A female passenger suspected that the women may not be the true mother of the baby and arriving a check point near Jos, she alerted the STF.
Commander of the STF at Sector 1, Colonel Musa Etsu-Ndagi, who spoke to journalists shortly after the women were apprehended, said, upon interrogation one of the suspects among the two women, Miss Doris Ebuburonu, had confessed to have bought the baby for N300,000 and is taking it to her client in Lagos.
The women were arrested and detained and after parading them before newsmen, the baby was handed over to the Nigeria Civil Defense for onward transfer to the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking of Persons (NAPTIP).
However the present Commander of the Special task-force, Major General Anthony Atolagbe, said the his command is committed to rid the State from every form of criminality, especially in the coming yuletide season. adding that Plateau State is no longer a safe haven for hoodlums.
Atolagbe said that every year, security agents discover several new baby factories bubbling in the heinous crime of pumping out babies (child harvesting) for sale on the illegal adoption market by encouraging or forcing women to become pregnant and give up their newborns for sale.
He however said his Command, is prepared to ensure that such act is brought to a half, warning that those operating baby factories in Plateau should shut down before the eagle eyes of his men will close up on them.
Consequently, in random interview conducted while writing this report, our correspondent gathered that unlike legal child adoption which considers every child a gift to humanity if nurtured properly, operators of baby factories do not bother to ask important questions to individuals patronising them, questions such as: “What do you do for a living? What are your working hours? How do you intend to look after the child when you are off to work? Have you any medical plans for the child?
“Do you intend to include the child in your will and take care of him or her like your biological children when they come? How do you think the child would feel if tomorrow after learning that she/he was given up for a lot of money? This is simply because they see no reason to care one bit about the future of these babies”, they said.
By Kingsley Chukwuka, Jos.
