A 45-year old man, Hassan Kabiru, suspected to be a child-trafficker, was yesterday arrested by a vigilance group in Kano while he was attempting to escape with a teenage boy, 11-year-old Abubakar Dahiru.
The 11-year-old was allegedly kidnapped by the suspect while the former was roaming the streets as he could not locate the way to his residence in the Fagge quarters of Kano metropolis.
The Kano State a Commandant of the vigilance group, Muhammad Kabir Alhaji told the Sunday Mirror that the suspect was arrested during a routine patrol of his men.
Such has been a common occurrence in many Nigerian communities, in which children who strayed were kidnapped. But these days, kidnapping itself along with allied crimes such as child trafficking, illegal adoption and the new genre, ‘baby factory’, have all been ‘institutionalised.’
Human trafficking is recognised as a heinous crime against the conscience of humanity. Nigeria is globally fingered as one of the countries culpable for high incidence of the crime. But advancing on that notoriety, the country has now advanced to another level, enriching the lexicon of crimes with a scenario known as ‘baby factory’ or ‘baby harvesting.’ There is no legal definition, however, for the phenomenon of ‘baby factory’ or ‘baby harvesting.’ These terms were used by Nigerian journalists to describe the criminal activities in the country involving restriction of a person’s movement against such a person’s will, the forced impregnation of hapless young ladies, the sale of their babies and illegal adoption of children.
The first cases of “baby harvesting” in Nigeria were officially reported in 2006 by UNESCO. The world body specifically referred to three Nigerian states: Abia, Ebonyi and Lagos. The detected cases had a similar fact pattern. Pregnant teenagers or adult women with unwanted pregnancies approached doctors, clinics, nurses or orphanages that subsequently took care of these girls and women during their pregnancies. When babies were born they were sold to couples. The natural mothers of the babies signed papers repudiating their claims on the babies and received monetary compensation.
UNESCO, however, neither stated in their report how exactly babies were used upon their sale to a third party, nor reported any trace of exploitation of pregnant women and young girls as well as their babies.
Since 2006, reported cases of “baby factories” in Nigeria have been on the increase with new facts emerging about this phenomenon being a core element of human trafficking.
According to reports, women and girls are lured into such “factories” through deception while capitalising on their vulnerability. Thus, traffickers usually approach their victims with promises of jobs or safe abortions. There are at least two factors that make these victims vulnerable: being children (most victims are still teenagers) or being pregnant out of wedlock, which carries a social stigma in the country. Girls and women are locked up at facilities used as “baby factories,” allowing their traffickers to establish control over them and hold them until they give birth to babies that are subsequently sold to third parties.
Victims who are not pregnant when they arrived at the “baby factory” are forcibly impregnated while there. Some of them are being held at the facility for as long as their captors wanted while they continue to produce babies for sale. Though the babies produced are mostly sold for the purposes of adoption, they are also allegedly used for sacrifices, sex trade, and manual labour as they were sold to third parties.
The “baby factory” industry flourishes in Nigeria as confirmed by various media reports of police raids. For example, in May 2008, police rescued about 25 teenage girls from a hospital in Enugu. In June 2011, police freed 32 teenage girls from a “baby factory” located in the city of Aba. In October 2011, 17 pregnant girls were saved from an orphanage in Lagos. In May 2013, police rescued some of these hapless persons who include six teenage girls from a “baby factory” in Enugu, 17 pregnant teenage girls and 11 babies in Southern Imo province, and about 26 teenage girls in Umuaka village, Imo State.
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