AGBARHO AND CHILD ABDUCTIONS
Every child deserves the right to life
For months, there has been heightened tension over serial abductions of children in Agbarho, Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State. But last Wednesday, the anger of the community boiled over as some irate mob lynched and set ablaze a lady, allegedly for hiding a seven-year-old child in a sack. While the police are on the heels of those behind the dastardly act, a disturbed Ede Dafinone, their representative in the country’s Senate, noted that though their frustration is understandable, acts of mob justice only deepen the crisis and risk innocent lives.
Issues of missing children have been rife in Agbarho, a densely populated community near Warri, leaving many families devastated. Mostly between the ages of four and ten, some of the children went to school and failed to return, others vanished while playing with mates, while some others disappeared under more foggy circumstances. In the last one year, many of the stolen children are yet to be found. In a public outrage, hundreds of women last week trooped out and blocked major roads for several hours, and shut down businesses, prompted by an alleged fresh abduction of some children, one of whom is said to be the child of a prominent community leader. The women urgently sought the intervention of the state governor, Sheriff Oborevwori, and the State Police Command to save the most vulnerable in the community.
But child kidnapping incidents have become so routine across the country. Of the 23,000 people reportedly missing in Nigeria, a significant number of them are children, leaving thousands of families in anguish. Indeed, besides issues of poverty and poor nutrition, poor health, and inadequate access to quality education, many parents contend with issues of widespread violence against their wards.
Following more than a decade of insurgency and violence in the Northeast, Nigeria continues to feature prominently on the list of countries where thousands of children have been wasted in conflicts. From the Northeast which has been home to a protracted insurgency since 2009, to the Northwest, which is becoming increasingly laid waste by banditry, to the North central weighed down by farmer-herder crisis, children have lost their innocence as many are victims of aggression. Many of them are victims of airstrikes, landmines and other explosive weapons. Some are used as suicide bombs. Families are ripped apart and tens of thousands of children left for dead or scarred for life.
In 2022, a set of over 25 children were allegedly lured and trafficked out of the northern region by a suspected syndicate. And recently the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) rescued eight children after a raid on an orphanage with more than 70 children in Asaba, the Delta State capital. The stolen children were from some northern states. The operation, conducted with the Department of State Services (DSS), the Nigerian police and local civil society groups, came after years of complaints from parents in Kano and neighbouring states over missing children. Besides the mental and physical torture, abducting and exposing children to conflicts increases their risk of morbidity and mortality.
Unfortunately, the Child Rights Act, domesticated in most of the 36 states, is hardly enforced to protect the Nigerian child. Besides, the United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goals intended to be achieved in 2030, provides a universal plan to secure a better future for children. Target two of the 16th goal in the blueprint pledges to “end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.” While questions remain as to whether this is achievable in the nearest future, every Nigerian child deserves, at the very minimum, a right to life.
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