‘Mothers encourage child trafficking’

Mrs. Beatrice Jedy-Agba is the Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP). She speaks on how mothers give out their children willingly and trafficking. How would you rate Nigerians understanding of child trafficking? I think their understanding is pretty limited, and that’s one of the issues we keep battling […]

Mrs. Beatrice Jedy-Agba is the Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP). She speaks on how mothers give out their children willingly and trafficking.

How would you rate Nigerians understanding of child trafficking?
I think their understanding is pretty limited, and that’s one of the issues we keep battling with. What people understand about trafficking is really the external trafficking for sexual exploitation. People have limited understanding about the kind of trafficking that goes on in our homes every day, the kind that we ourselves perpetrate, keeping underage girls, depriving them of education and keeping them practically as slaves, working for little or no education or payment. One of the targets of our public enlightenment is to say you cannot do these to an underage child. Maybe our cultural perspective makes it okay to just take a girl from the village and make her a house help. But how much help does she give you and what does she get in return? Are you doing this at the detriment of her development? The awareness is better than it was a few years ago but there is still a lot of work to be done. It is a common sight to see a little girl carrying the baby, the baby bag and the madam is just moving around. When you see things like this, what do you do?
I live in Nigeria so I understand we need to have help for our babies, but how young must a person be? There are children everywhere in the world, and they use nannies that are chosen to be nannies—it is what they want to do, they get paid for it, they don’t get beaten for making mistakes. In our own society, what we do is to take a girl of six or seven who is totally submissive, doesn’t have a say in the number of hours she has to work, she is given multiple responsibilities and doesn’t even realise she can say no. She is too young to defend herself. Then comes the exploitation and it is trafficking.
How ready is the average Nigerian woman to curb trafficking?
The average Nigerian woman reinforces trafficking and so it is important that they have the awareness: Would you deprive your own child of education for two years so that she can look after a sibling? Why would you do that to someone else’s child? It is important that they have the right information. We have redefined our laws and our public enlightenment messages so that women can begin to realise they cannot do this. Under the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act, 2015 which former president Goodluck Jonathan assented to in March 2015, you cannot employ someone below 12 years as a domestic worker.
What is the jail term for employing someone below 12 years?
Two years, I think.
And you think it is commensurate with these crimes?
There are aggravating circumstances. We have seen women who light up stoves and use knives to scare their housegirls for eating too much or breaking a plate or making mistakes with their children.
How do mothers contribute to trafficking?
 There are situations where mothers give out their children because others are doing it. Sometimes mothers have too many children and they cannot cater for them, and so they encourage these children very early to work and do anything that will bring extra food to the table.
Children become breadwinners as early as six or seven. These mothers resent our interventions. In some environments, the children are taken from the mothers and into care, but our culture doesn’t encourage that. We try to keep children with their parents because we believe it is still better for a child to grow up with their loved ones rather than in an institution.
What would you consider the most challenging factors you have faced?
 I will say lack of cooperation, sometimes from victims of trafficking. Human trafficking is a victim-centred offence. At times, they are not willing to go back due to what they have been through and they need to go through that process to help us succeed in court. We cannot prosecute without the evidence of the victims. Of course, if there are witnesses, that’s fine. They just want to move on. They are restrained by fear, culture or stigma.
How do you counsel victims?
We have a whole support structure put in place—counsellors, psychologists, contacts with general hospitals and civil society organisations that offer services suitable for people who have been trafficked.
What do you notice after they undergo counseling?
They are able to live with themselves. The shame and stigma make the victims blame themselves for what they’ve been through—before they go into therapy. And they still see the trafficker as someone they have to protect because the person tried to assist them to improve their socio-economic status. After counselling, they realise they were used, exploited. There is nothing wrong in seeking a better life. It is just that the person took advantage of their vulnerability to inflict all this pain on them. It is very important for healing.
Is the family a part of this process?
As part of support, we also counsel families and we monitor them to ensure the reintegration is as seamless as possible. We have found cases where it is not always possible for families to accept them back, or we realise the family was the primary place of exploitation and it would not be to the benefit of the victims, then we provide alternative support. We have shelters. It is actually short term, but we have provision for longer term when there is nowhere for them to go to and they are too young to be sent out on their own. We send some to other non-governmental organisations which run shelters, so the children can go to school and spend holidays with NAPTIP.
 A lot of trafficked girls go back to the life they lived before rescue. What is the reason for that?
In prison parlance, it is called recidivism. In human trafficking it is re-victimisation. They think they have worked for someone, and if they are now working for themselves and keeping their money themselves, they make more money. Sometimes they actually go back to those situations and find themselves being re-victimised.
There are reports some rescued victims go to shelters and are beaten, called names. Is it something you are aware of?
I have never heard of that. It is definitely not allowed. The centres are staffed by trained people. You should work with NAPTIP for a day and see what the victims have been through, there is no way you can despise them. No staff is tempted. There is a code of conduct for treatment of victims of trafficking. It would become a disciplinary issue if you use an inappropriate word on a victim. If we stigmatise the very people for whom the agency was set up to look after, then, what is the purpose for having an organisation like NAPTIP?