DSS Dismantles Child Trafficking Syndicate Rescues 36 Victims In Bayelsa

FROM RIGHT TO LEFT
REV DADA NUHU, REV ANTHONY ONUBIYI, REV BENZALIY ISHAYA ALL OF ASSEMBLIES OF GOD CHURCH AND MRS TOMBRA ALAPIYA A PRIVATE SCHOOL PROPRIETOR IN YENAGOA, ALLEGEDLY ACCUSED OF TRAFFICKING IN 36 CHILDREN RESCURED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE SERVICES IN YENAGOA. 15/7/2015

TRAFFICKER SUSPECTS

TRAFFICKED CHILDREN

From: Arodiegwu Eziukwu

The Bayelsa Command of Department of State Services (DSS) on Wednesday said it has smashed a child trafficking syndicate and rescued 36 trafficked children.

Briefing Journalists on the operation, Mr Friday Onuche Deputy Director at Bayelsa Command of the DSS said the operation was carried out on July 6, 2015 and led to arrest of four suspects.

According to him the victims comprising of 12 males and 24 females were rescued from homes where they were given out as house helps in Yenagoa and Kaiama in Bayelsa, Port Harcourt, and Enugu-Agidi in Anambra.

Onuche said that the suspected syndicates operate under the guise of missionaries and Non Government Organizations target vulnerable children from Zamfara, Kaduna and Kebbi states and traffick the Southern part of the country.

According to the DSS, the parents of the target children are usually approached and convinced to release their wards under the pretext of assisting the children to acquire good education only for the children to end up as house helps.

“There is need therefore for members of the public to be sensitized on the need to be circumspect in the way they give out children or take in children from such unscrupulous modern day slave traders,” Onuche said.

In their testimonies some of the children who narrated their ordeal to newsmen said that the missionaries who arranged with their parents to place them in choice schools reneged on their promises and handed them to foster parents.

“ The Pastors who came to our villages in Zaria and convinced some parents who are unable to train their children in schools but when we got to Bayelsa they now took us to different homes.

“The woman I was asked to live with used to assign me to go to farm and I also sell water for her, and I am no longer going to school I started school at the beginning of the term but she told me to stop school now,” One of the trafficked children said.

Meanwhile the three male suspects who claimed to be clergymen with Assemblies of God Mission mainted that they were in the eandeavour for humanitarian grounds and merely collected transport ‘fares’ from prospective parents.