CHILD TRAFFICKING IN NIGERIA
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of the 6th edition,
child is a young human being who is not yet an adult. It also defines
trafficking as an act of buying and selling things illegally.
So, child trafficking is an inhuman act where children are being used
unjustly as objects of business transaction. Boys and girls are involved but
girls are mostly involved as victims. They are taken from their parents by
the trafficker who with deceitful words promises the girl’s parent’s heaven
and earth for instance that she will send them to school or that she has a
business in abroad like a saloon where the girls can work for few months and
establish theirs. Parents who are living in the villages are the ones they
use to go to, because most of them are unable to afford both material and
financial needs of all their children. Such parents have no alternative than
giving out their child\children who maybe in their teens to the lady who
pretended to be good.
Also some girls who are not contented with what they have always keep eyes on their friends who do not have both material and financial problems without minding how they get such problems solved. They can be easily introduced to the trafficker, if that their friend’s are related to the lady in charge. You find out that most of them will be pleased to fly abroad whether they know what they are going there to do or not. They are only concerned with looking like their friends so as for people to admire them and see them as big girls in town.
Despite the fact that the trafficker will take the children to overseas as she promised but the children will engaged in some dirty games like prostitution and drug addiction etc.
The saddest part of all is that their madam {trafficker} uses them for making money. She will cloth them with rules such as telling them that some certain percentage of what they earn from their games belongs to her maybe on daily or weekly basis.
Despite all these government can still work on this heavily by the following:
Firstly, government should declare free education in every school that is the school owned by the government maybe to the secondary school level. By so doing, parents will not have the excuse of giving out their children to someone else to take care of them.
Secondly, government should see to duly paying of workers salaries at the end of each month and not leaving them empty handed at the end of the month because they need money to solve the problems facing them in the family and also to prevent them from exposing their children to those heartless human beings that use children illegally to make money.
The last but not the least is that the parliamentary arm of government should sit together with the support of the president, make laws for children against abuse and intimidation. Also the judiciary arm should be strict in punishing anybody found exhibiting the act of child trafficking.