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| Omosun Sylvester Urdeen |
| In My Humble Opinion |
| Posted by urdeen on October 10, 2004, 3:56 pm
My country, Nigeria with every scenery to show for her ordeal. I watched them coming toward me, mouth jerking as in worked by wires, eyes open with beggarliness, arms stretching in violent outreaching, eye milky drawing on me, killing me with my thoughts. The view of trafficked children working on the streets, children not yet in their teens, hawking along the busy road, how many have met their death? How many have been exploited and abused and used? I read about them in the foreign media, and I wondered why not in my own country are there publications on the subject? Yet I read on the BBC web site that Unicef estimates that human trafficking is the most lucrative trade in West Africa. Why? This discovery will shock you when you realize the support that human trafficking enjoys at almost every level of the Nigerian society, and more shocking is the fact that the trafficked children were rented out with the collaboration of the victims' own immediate families, Many of the victims are too young to understand their rights or are illegally recruited from the north or the poorer village tribes by individuals; forced to work as hired hands and forced to work against their will, What does a house help mean? What is the hidden meaning behind the words, what does a slave, mean, is there any difference between the two, and maybe we are ignorant of these terms but are we really? Are we really ignorant about our past, is the government blind to the plight of these children being taken into 'slavery' or when their immediate parents, aunts and uncles were being tricked into taking a loan, a loan that may tie them into the bondage of slavery forever children work in exploitative and/or dangerous conditions. According to the United Nations census (Unicef ) there are no fewer that 15 million children working in exploitative labor in Nigeria, but they are wrong, as an African and a traveling nomad I can paint a bigger picture of the "21st century slave trade." I had my first intimate sexual encounter when I was but seven years old with a house help not yet in her teens. Children not yet in their teens are forced to learn about sex or to work in the sex industry. As the writer in me grows, so does the knowledge grow that this trade will continue and as it continues , it will continue to use new terms even though it is illegal under international law. Trafficking is the fastest growing form of slavery in the third world nation today, yet protection for the victims of this crime is never there. |
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