TRIBUNE EDITORIAL BOARD
RECENTLY, men of the Ondo State Police Command busted three suspects allegedly involved in child trafficking following a sting operation. Strangely, the suspects identified as Lukman Isiaka, 43; Abosede Olanipekun, 23; and Sabira Izuorah, 68, were apprehended with no fewer than 14 babies and toddlers stolen from Akure, the state capital, and Ilesa, Osun State. The babies and toddlers were recovered from the ‘orphanage’ run by the principal suspect, Izuorah, in Ihiala, Anambra State, where they were trafficked by Lukman and Abosede, who are a couple. While being paraded at the police headquarters in Akure, Izuorah, who claimed to have retired as a Director from the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Anambra State, admitted to receiving children from the couple. She said: “I have a registered orphanage. I took care of children. The name of my orphanage is Clarion Children’s Care and Reforms Initiatives and it started full operation in 2020. Lukman and his wife brought a total of 11 children to me. I don’t pay them; it is the adoptive parents who pay them. The adoptive parents don’t pay me; they give us food items and supplies. I stopped Lukman and his wife from bringing children for me in November 2024. All the children were no longer with me, but I went to recover them from their adoptive parents. It didn’t start with me, and it will not end with me.”
Under interrogation, Lukman, a bricklayer, owned up to the crime. According to him, he had been involved in the crime since 2023 when Izuorah introduced him and his wife to the illicit trade when he left Ondo State to work in Anambra. Hear him: “I have been stealing children since 2023. I have given a total of 11 children to Izuorah. The method my wife and I used to steal the children was that whenever we saw children roaming about, we called them and said we would buy soft drinks and biscuits for them. After telling them that, they would follow us. After walking for about 10 minutes, we would take a bike to the park where we would board a vehicle to Anambra State to give Izuorah the children. She normally gave us N500,000 for each child that we brought to her. I met Izuorah when we went to Anambra to work. I’m a bricklayer. She was the one who introduced me to the business after training me, and since then, I have been giving her children. I don’t know anything about the two-month-old and four-month-old babies. She is the one who can say where she got them from.”
Speaking on the case, the Ondo State Commissioner of Police, Wilfred Afolabi, said that intelligence-led policing caused Lukman and Abosede to be traced to Ottah village in Edo State where they were arrested. He said: “A case of a missing child was reported at Okuta Elerin-Nla Division in Akure. A complainant reported that Abosede deceived her by claiming she wanted to buy biscuits for the baby. Meanwhile, Lukman distracted the complainant by engaging her in a personal conversation and requested that she follow him to Olukayode Plaza in the market to get a mobile phone. On getting to the market area, he abandoned her and left. When the complainant returned to the shop, she discovered that her child was missing, with no trace of Abosede, the supposed sister of the man she followed to the market. Thus, a report was made at the Division. During interrogation, the suspects admitted to abducting the child and other children from Ondo and Osun states and selling them to Sabira Izuorah, aged 62 years, in Ihiala, Anambra State, at the rate of N1 million per child.” Still, the commissioner indicated that the command was making efforts to rescue some children who were still on the missing list.
For obvious reasons, child traffickers are a threat to national security. They rob children of their childhood and separate them from their parents in the most agonising circumstances. According to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic In Persons (NAPTIP), child trafficking activities are unremedied sources of exposure to infections related to HIV, traumatic and psychiatric diseases and illnesses in children. The pernicious practice contributes to illiteracy, homelessness, abuse, forced labour and sexual exploitation of children. As the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has observed poignantly, child labour exposes vulnerable children to trafficking, violence and the worst forms of forced labour. It is a no-brainer that every child deserves to grow up healthy, protected from harm and educated, so they can reach their full potential, but that, precisely, is what child traffickers seek to defeat by their criminality.
In the instant case, a couple habitually threw homes into despair by kidnapping children in the South-West and trafficking them to the South-East, and would certainly have continued the criminal activity if they had not been apprehended by the police. As we have said time and again, the Nigerian society is plagued by the spectre of people seeking to make money by inflicting pain and wreaking havoc on the lives of fellow citizens. In this case, a couple who in all probability are parents themselves found nothing wrong in kidnapping vulnerable children and selling them off to a fellow criminal. As their victims wailed, they probably patted themselves on the back for yet another successful operation in which they had sown endless tears and agony in the homes of their victims. The abducted children, defenceless and without the love of their parents, were thrown into a life of uncertainty, and may have been subjected to any kind of evil their buyers imagined. It is a fact that children as well as adults are used for money rituals, occult activities designed by desperately wicked individuals to make money, literally butchered so their abductors can, as it were, collect money from the devil.
On its part, the government has a bounden duty to monitor orphanages closely. Oftentimes, certain orphanages are no more than trafficking outposts. In this regard, the various state ministries of women affairs and social welfare should launch an all-out war against traffickers masquerading as philanthropists and childcare enthusiasts. If anyone is bringing a child to an orphanage, there must be police report and proper documentation. Strangely, while traffickers hold sway, legal adoption is sometimes said to be an extremely difficult exercise. This dark irony must be addressed. It encourages evil people and discourages good people.
Should the case against them be established in the court of law, the baby traders in this case should be given the strictest punishment provided by law. We hope that all traffickers rot in jail. We sincerely do.
Connect with us on our socials: