Listen to thisIn true African culture and tradition, children are valued beyond silver and gold. It is one of the tragedies of "modernity" that children have now become "commodities" criminally bought and sold by evil rings of hustlers who operate what are cynically referred to as "baby factories".
Teenage mothers are forced to give up their newborns for sale to childless couples and ritualists. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates more than ten newborns are sold in Nigeria every day. According to UNESCO, human trafficking is designated as the third most prevalent crime in Nigeria, after corruption and drug trafficking. Though several arrests are routinely made in different parts of the country, no case has been conclusively prosecuted.
The average childless Nigerian couple would prefer to arrange with the child traffickers to "buy" newly-born children and later pretend to have miraculously overcome their childlessness. They find it an easier way of escaping social and family pressures than adopting children through the normal, lawful processes.
There is the need, therefore, to crack down heavily on child traffickers and their patrons to show zero tolerance for this heinous and inhumane crime. We should regulate the operations of orphanages to make legal adoption easier. The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) needs to be more proactive in this regard. No decent society allows human life to be so debased as to condone the existence of "baby farms". The very idea is odious, abominable and a cultural taboo.
We must come out as a society to protect these innocent and helpless infants brought into the world through no choice of their own. All the "baby farms" in Nigeria should be identified and closed down immediately. Law enforcement agencies should go beyond arresting offenders to prosecute and bring them to justice to deter other intending culprits from engaging in the crime.
Childless couples and individuals should be encouraged to see adoption as a proud model of parenthood as in advanced countries of the world, rather than embracing the crime of stealing and "buying" children from evil traffickers. Our laws should also be strengthened to offer such children and their mothers full family and inheritance rights to protect them from being victimised by their extended foster family members.
We must be more serious with the full implementation of the Child Rights Act. It does not matter the circumstances under which a child is brought into the world, but once a child is born in any part of Nigeria, it is the bounden duty of the state and people of this country to protect them and give them the opportunity to be the best they can possibly be.
Editorial, Vanguard
20 October 3015
