By Ozioruva Aliu
BENIN CITY – THE Edo State Migration Agency on Thursday said it rescued two minors, including a sickle cell sufferer aged 13 and 14 years, from Kaduna State, who were being trafficked to Libya with a promise of being taken to Italy to work as housemaids.
Besides, another 18-year-old was rescued from Mali where she was trafficked to after being deceived that he was being taken to Lagos to work as a salesgirl.
Presenting the victims and a suspected trafficker to journalists, the Director General of the Agency Lucky Agazuma threatened to sanction transport companies believed to be involved in the trafficking racketeering based on the receipts recovered from the minors.
Agazuma said the agency heard about the case, swung into action and was able to intercept them in Zaria, Kaduna State.
He said, “The question is, how would a sickle cell girl survive in the desert? The good news is that when we brought them back, they were smart enough to come back with some evidence of receipts of the transport companies they are using in this state to traffic minors out.
“Based on this evidence, we have already reached out to many transport companies that they shouldn’t involve themselves in this devilish act.”
The DG, while urging members of the public to report any suspicious case of human trafficking to the agency, warned: “If you are a trafficker, be warned that we are very close to you. Please move away from Edo State.”
The 14-year-old sickle cell sufferer narrated that a boy in the area came to inform her that he wanted to take her and her friend to Libya, warning that they shouldn’t inform their parents until they get to Libya, and when they get there, they will call their parents’ phone as a surprise.
She added that he thereafter took two of them to a lady who took their photograph and sent it through phone to another person who complained of her health, but the lady with them assured the person at the other end that she was healthy.
According to the minor, they were taken to the motor park, bought them food and hijab, and handed them over to a vehicle en route to Kano with a phone number of whom to contact.
One of the suspects who identified herself as Comfort Etim, 49, said she was innocent of the children being trafficked, however, said that the boy actually brought the girls to her daughter with the claim that they were his sisters and that he wanted them to be taken abroad and she confessed that her daughter (who is at large) had so far trafficked six minors abroad.
Relatedly, the 18-year-old girl identified as Joseph Faith said she was deceived all the way from Afuze in Owan West local government of a salesgirl job in Lagos, but unfortunately, was trafficked to Mali.
She said when they got to Lagos, the woman who took her from Afuze proceeded to Cotonou and from there to Mali.
She said the woman in Cotonou handed her over to a Malian going to Mali and returned to Nigeria, adding that what she said in Mali was different from what she was told she was going to be doing.
“I arrived at Mali around 10 pm, and they then took me to a woman. When we got there, what she told me I was going to be doing was quite different from what I saw. The woman uses girls in her place for prostitution, so I told the woman that I can’t do it, and that I want to go back home. The woman told me that before I can go back home, the woman in Nigeria needs to bring another person to replace me.
“I was there for three weeks. I was starving. That was when I ran to the police station to report, and the police put me in a vehicle back in Nigeria.”
The post Edo Migration agency rescues teens en route Libya appeared first on Vanguard News.
