DSS busts child trafficking gang in Bayelsa

The Department of State Security (DSS) in Bayelsa State has bust a child trafficking ring rescuing 36 children aged between five and 14 years made up of 12 males and 24 females.

The department paraded four suspects, three males and one female in Yenagoa on Wednesday and told newsmen that they are still undergoing interrogation.

The suspects gave their names as Dauda Dada, 33, from Kebbi, Anthony Onibiyi, 53, from Enugu State, Benzali Ishaya from Kaduna State and Tombra Alazigha, 38, from Bayelsa State.

The children were already being used as house-helps when they were rescued from Yenagoa and Kaiama in Bayelsa State and Enugu-Agidi and Port Harcourt in Enugu and Rivers States respectively.

The children were taken from their parents in the Zuru area of Kebbi and Zamfara States and Zaria in Kaduna State in the “guise of assisting them to acquire good education in the city only for the children to end up as house- helps”, a DSS statement said.

According to the department, “there is need, therefore, for members of the public to be sensitized on the need to be circumspect in the way they give out children or take in children from such unsuspecting modern slave traders, please.”

Alazigha told newsmen that she runs a charity organisation and private school, Christian Heritage School located at Biogbolo in Yenagoa and that she receives N12,000 from would be foster parents as transport fare.

Alazigha, a  masters degree holder in Accountancy, said she has six of the children under her care and that she gives transport fare to Onibiyi to bring the children for education and fostering.

Onibiyi who said he is a pastor with the Assemblies of God Church has four of the children living with him in his village and that he brought all 36 children from Danloto in Kebbi State.

Incidentally, Dada and Ishaya are also pastors with the Assemblies of God Church, but it is not clear if the church has anything to do with the movement of the children.

One of the victims who identified herself as Jessica Isaiah (14) said she was already in JS2 when she was brought to Bayelsa in January and promised education. She recounted how she was forced to go to the farm and sell water by her foster mother and when she resisted was beaten and later told she cannot go to school anymore.

According to her, her foster mother even tried to transfer her to her daughter and when she asked to speak with the missionary (Onibiyi) she was denied.

 Samuel Ese