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Edo State Migration Agency has intercepted a 14-year-old sickle cell sufferer and a 13-year-old girl being trafficked to Libya by a human trafficking syndicate.

Parading the minors (names withheld) before newsmen on Thursday in Benin, Director-General of the agency, Lucky 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.”

Agazuma, who said the agency will not fold its arms and watch Edo children trafficked out of the country at a time the state government is spending billions of naira to make sure Edo children have access to quality education, noted that all suspects arrested in connection with the case will be prosecuted in line with the appropriate laws.

The DG, while urging members of the public to report any suspicious case of human trafficking to the agency, warned: “If you’re a trafficker, be warned that we are very close to you. It is better if you 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 got to Libya, and when they got there they would call their parents’ phone as a surprise.

She added that he thereafter took the two of them to a lady who took their photograph and sent it via 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 thereafter asked to go and take their bath, after which they went back to the lady, who took them 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 who to contact.

She said they were on their way when calls from both the boy and the lady came in, asking them to come back because their mother had been arrested, and that they would not release the lady’s mother until they returned home.
The minor added that when they eventually got to Zaria, they called the contact person who asked them to come, but the lady at the other end called and asked them to return home, adding that the lady thereafter transferred money to a driver in the park who brought them back home.

One of the suspects, who identified herself as Comfort Etim, 49, who 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.

Mrs. Etim, who claimed she was never aware that the children were to be trafficked abroad, confessed that her daughter (who is at large) had so far trafficked six minors abroad.

In a related development, the agency also paraded an 18-year-old girl who was deceived with a sales girl job in Lagos but unfortunately trafficked to Mali.
Narrating her ordeal, Joseph Faith said she was promised a sales girl job in Lagos but when they got to Lagos, the woman who took her from Afuze, Edo State, proceeded to Cotonou and from there to Mali.

She said the woman in Cotonou handed her over to a man going to Mali and returned back to Nigeria, adding that what she saw in Mali was different from what she was told she was going to be doing.

“I arrived at Mali around 10 PM. 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. What the woman uses girls in her place for was 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 to Nigeria.”
Asked how she survived for the three weeks she spent in Mali, she said: “It was not easy for me. Since I refused to do it (prostitution) she refused to feed me. So, I usually came out at night, and people gave me money. This is how I survived.”