POVERTY AND ILLITERACY

THE FUEL FOR CHILD TRAFFICKING/LABOR AND SEX SLAVERY

I watched with pain as NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons), the anti-human trafficking agency in my country Nigeria narrate their daily ordeal with child/women traffickers around the country and even outside our borders. One factor keeps coming up as every agent narrates his/her experience...POOR BACKGROUND of the victims. Almost all the victims in all cases discussed were taken from their local communities (villages) by someone very well known to them or their families on the promise of a "good job, better living conditions and greener pastures". Now, most of those parents release these kids because they want them to find a meaning out of life and become better humans than they turned out to be with hopes that they will, at the long run come back to liberate the entire family and community by extension (but we also know of some parents who knowingly sell their kids for such ventures because of their economic state and other reasons). Then we also have those 'baby manufacturing' industries where underage, uneducated, unexposed and wretched girls are used 'manufacture' babies that are eventually sold to families in need of children or injected back into the 'trade'.

Looking at global statistics, one will easily notice that countries like China, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Ghana, Uganda, Brazil and my Nigeria have the highest number of persons trafficked majorly as sex or domestic slaves, child labor/abuse and in most unmentioned cases, money ritual. It is interesting to also note that these same countries are among the most populous and poverty stricken nations on earth (I understand China is eyeing the 'biggest economy in the world' spot) but they ought to check other lists that they are already 'biggest' at, like this very list.

I can speak for my country and I will categorically state that the major factor fueling trafficking persons is poverty and illiteracy. The class of people you often see falling victims of this evil franchise are people from very low income suburbs whose 'relative' promise a better livelihood either in the city or abroad. They convince the poor unsuspecting parents by parading flashy materials, cars, food stuff and cash, they claim to have 'arrived' and are willing to extend a hand of kindness or repay an old favor. Since there is never a generalization of anything, I will like to add that some actually fulfill the promise they made but it must also be clear that only a tiny fraction of that number fall under this category.

Permit me to break this down for you, I met Baba Titi, a taxi driver with three wives and nineteen children, as you can guess, all his wives are petty traders and only the older boys are out 'hustling' while Titi the eldest daughter got married after a neighbors son put her the 'family way' at seventeen, she is now thirty two and has five children of her own. Nine among the children managed to attend the community primary school in the area with only three proceeding to same community secondary school, the rest either refused to attend or were taken by the streets before their parents can realize what is happening. The most intriguing part of Baba Titi's story is that a relative of his took two of his daughters 'abroad to work' seven years ago and the only contact he had with them happened four years ago and he is not worried over anything, in fact he is delighted that some of his burdens have been dropped and is willing to let more of the kids go that way. In his words "so far say them dey alive, I believe say them dey okay, atleast dem don comot my small-small headache, when I finish take care of this ones wey dey house? Abeg mek them dey dia, na woman dem be and if the other girls wan go too I no go say no. Abi wetin you think my brother?". Now, this same man lost two boys some years back, one through car accident and the other from 'unknown illness', the combined net-worth of the Baba Titi household can be summarized thus; A rickety Volvo taxi cab, the house he inherited from his father and now lives in with his two brothers and their families (equally as large as his) and the petty trade goods on the five tables owned by two of his wives (the third wife sells food at a building construction site and is deemed the 'richest' in the whole family), all in all, half a million Naira cannot be squeezed from the entire clan.

Now, imagine the level of poverty, the number of children and the nonchalant attitude towards the absence of two daughters (every one in the family appears to have either forgotten about the girls or is simply busy trying to survive just like everyone else). It will interest you to know that some family members don't even know the girls and some cannot remember anything about them. One of the wives was backing a baby who from what I saw cannot be more that eleven months old (that means Baba Titi is still very much in the game and is not heeding the referees' time-out whistle). This is just the story of one man willing to share and bare the ordeal of his life with me, imagine a 'Baba Titi' in every city in Nigeria, add the number and don't forget the two daughters in only-God-knows-where and what they are doing.

I have also been privileged to meet young, brilliant and vibrant men like me who died on the road-trip to Europe ('Europe by road' as it is called in my Nigeria), many others either get stuck on the way or ended us being banged in strange lands where no one knows them and in fact no one cares so they are left to rot in captivity, all for 'greener pastures'.

These stories and many more abound around each and every one of us, we simply don't pay attention or care because we ourselves are struggling to make ends meet, but as Kashim Shettima (the Borno State Governor) rightly said about the Boko Haram menace that ravaged the North East of my country...“there is a direct collaboration between violence, poverty and illiteracy; they provide the perfect mix to produce the perfect mix that will consume all of us. When people have little or nothing positive to expect in their tomorrow, they will not see reasons to preserve themselves for tomorrow and a hopeless person in a state of lack does not mind dying. Unless we wear our thinking caps as leaders, the future is very bleak.’’ 

And as Bertolt Brecht stated in the play "Mother Courage and Her Children"..."I am not courageous. Only the poor have courage. Why? Because they are hopeless. To get up every morning to plow a potato field in wartime, to bring kids with no prospects into the world. To live poor...that takes courage."

Interestingly, I only hear "Kidnap" and "Ransom request" whenever the 'well-to-do' fall into the hands of these same evil people...

In conclusion, give birth to as many as you can "pay ransom" for, otherwise, you will add to the GLOBAL MANACE...

"I am not courageous. Only the poor have courage. Why? Because they are hopeless. To get up every morning to plow a potato field in wartime, to bring kids with no prospects into the world. To live poor-- that takes courage."

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=194&t=23270

"I am not courageous. Only the poor have courage. Why? Because they are hopeless. To get up every morning to plow a potato field in wartime, to bring kids with no prospects into the world. To live poor-- that takes courage."

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=194&t=23270

"I am not courageous. Only the poor have courage. Why? Because they are hopeless. To get up every morning to plow a potato field in wartime, to bring kids with no prospects into the world. To live poor-- that takes courage."

Read more at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=194&t=23270