LAST week, men of the Anambra State command of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) arrested a hotel proprietor in the state while rescuing nine girls used as sex slaves in the facility. According to the command’s spokesperson, DSP Ikenga Tochukwu, the girls confessed to have been taken from Ebonyi, Enugu, Akwa-Ibom and Rivers states. Tochukwu said: “Following the information received from the Anambra State Ministry of Women and Social Welfare on June 18, police operatives stormed a hotel in Awka and rescued nine girls within the age bracket of 15 to 23 years used as sex slaves, and arrested the proprietor of the hotel. Meanwhile, further interrogations/confessions of the rescued girls revealed that the respective persons that brought them to the brothel lured or enticed them on the assurances of giving them jobs to alleviate poverty or the needs of their parents and dependents.
“Also, the police command is in collaboration with the Anambra State Ministry of Women and Social Welfare to make sure the girls are taken care of and safely returned to their parents/guardians. The command condemns the act and frowns on such persons who take advantage of vulnerable individuals to make money and describes such places as a den where criminals take refuge. We urge the good people of Anambra to continue to provide the police with information about such places, as the joint operations to weed out such dens has commenced.” The police spokesman added that the case had since been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Awka, for comprehensive investigations, following which the prime suspect would be charged to court.
Sad as the fate of the young women thrown into a brutal profession through adverse circumstances is, it is still a reflection of the failure of the state to meet the basic needs of citizens and perform its duty of care, including security of life and property. Insofar as subjecting young girls, or indeed anybody, to a life of prostitution even while the laws of the land expressly forbids such criminality amounts to a threat to their lives, the government must carry the can for creating the lax environment in which such a crime against the dignity of the human person has been allowed to thrive. Naturally, nobody would want to go into that kind of dehumanizing job. Indeed, a person involved in prostitution of any kind needs to debase herself/himself first before doing that kind of job. In this case, it is as if the girls concerned shelved their rights under the constitution, but it is important to recognise that they were being held against their will. Besides, most of the girls are underage, and so whatever consent they purportedly gave their abusers is of no consequence. In any case, you cannot lawfully consent to illegality.
If anything, this story confirms the need for extra vigilance on the part of the government, security agencies, families and parents in tackling the continuing menace of trafficking in the country. It is striking that the girls used as sex slaves were literally taken away even without the knowledge and consent of their parents. Since those involved in the evil and shady business of luring hapless children and teenagers into prostitution and other criminal activities would stop at nothing to continue perpetrating their nefarious enterprise, it is the responsibility of the government and security agencies to be proactive in the structures they put in place to checkmate these evildoers while enjoining families and parents to be alert to their responsibility of caring for the overall wellbeing and welfare of their children and wards.
This way, thereaa would be enough signals to pick up in identifying acts designed to hoodwink unsuspecting youngsters into the embrace of the traffickers. In addition, there ought to be clear, prompt and decisive treatment of proven cases of trafficking. The state must adequately punish those involved in the dastardly trade to serve as a deterrent to would-be criminals. We believe that one way to do that would be to subject those implicated in the instant case to the full wrath of the law.
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