Child traffickers spread sorrow in Plateau community

More
1 year 6 months ago #9147 by patrickd



Residents of Tudun Wada community in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State are living in perpetual fear. This is because children below 12 are becoming endangered species on account of child trafficking.

The unhealthy development has caused great commotion in the neighborhood where four children have gone missing due to activities of suspected child traffickers.

For 45-year-old Mrs. Rose Abednego, a divorcee and mother of eight, these are certainly not the best of times for her. She is passing through excruciating pains following the disappearance of her children, Panmak Friday, 11, and nine-year-old Nanblip Friday.

The two children have been missing for about three months now without any idea about their whereabouts. This has left the mother and other residents of the area in fear, despair and total despondency.

Rose reportedly sent the children on July 13, at about 2pm to buy coco-yam at Tudun Wada park, in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State, for lunch. Since then, the children, who went out with her neighbour’s son, did not return home while the neighbour’s son returned alone late in the evening.

Confused, Rose went to the park that evening, crying and asking passers-by whether any of them sighted her children but nobody responded to her, including the neighbour’s son.



She was left in utter dismay that fateful night, wailing and searching for her children from one house to another without success. Rose visited her husband’s residence in Bukuru, thinking he was the person that picked the children, since they were no longer together.

The matter took a bitter dimension when her husband accused her of hiding the children and insisted that she must provide the children that fateful night. Rose moved to the nearest police station and reported the matter for swift intervention.

When our reporter visited Rose in her apartment at Mado Tourism, Tudun Wada, Jos, three months after the ugly incident, she was still hapless and hopeless, calling on relevant authorities to come to her aid.

Recounting how her children disappeared from the community, she said: “We returned from the farm that fateful day and the children said they wanted to eat cocoyam and I gave them money to go to Tudun Wada park to buy it with palm oil. After sometime, they returned without the cocayam, saying it had finished.

“I told them since cocoyam was not available, they should have brought potato. So, they decided to go back to the park with my neighbour’s son and he came back alone. When I asked, he told me that she don’t know why my children didn’t come back.

“I met some of my neighbours and explained to them and we waited till about 7pm to see if they would come back. When there was no sign that they were coming home, I started moving round the area, asking people but nobody knew their whereabouts.

“The following morning, I went to Bukuru to find out if it was their father that took the children. He told me to go and bring the children for him, saying that it wasn’t him that took them. I went to our family house to check and they were not there.

“When I noticed that the matter was getting out of control, I decided to go to Tudun Wada police station and report the incident. They kept asking me to come to the station until a day that I was referred to A Division where the matter is currently being handled.”

Rose said she has been having sleepless nights since her children were taken away by unknown persons. She appealed to security agencies to investigate and rescue her children alive.

Similarly, Godfrey Gokum, who is suffering the same fate, said his seven-year-old daughter, Mudimka Gokum, disappeared on May 23, 2022, when she stepped out of a house where she was plaiting her hair.

Gokum said he cannot explain how the incident occurred but described it as surprising. He said: “I was in my shop on Monday, May 23, 2022, while my wife was plaiting her hair in a neighbouring house.

“I decided to close from the shop at about 7pm and go home. When my elder son came to the shop and noticed that I had closed, he went back to tell my wife that I had gone home. Unknowingly, my daughter, Mudimka, sneaked out of the shop without the knowledge of my wife.

“When it was time for them to go home, they thought that the baby had walked home to meet me so they all came home and discovered that she was not with me. We started searching from house to house but we couldn’t see her and went to the police station to report the matter.”

Gokum said since then they have not heard about her, while the police have continued to beam their search for her.

However, Plateau State Police Command, on Wednesday, September 7, 2022, arrested two suspected child traffickers at Tudun Wada community, who were about to be lynched by irate youths from the community. The suspects, who gave there names as Dickson Andrew Ali, 27, and Matthew Dakum, 34, both from Tudun Wada, Jos, confessed to have taken away three children, among whom were two boys and one girl.

The state commissioner of police, Bartholomew Onyeka, during a press briefing in Jos, said the suspects confessed that one Jennifer contracted them to be getting children for her to take to an orphanage to attract funding from non-government organisations.

He said: “On 07/09/2022, at about 1320hrs, while acting on a tip-off that two suspected children traffickers were about to be lynched by irate youths of Tudun Wada, patrol team led by Divisional Police Officer of ‘A’ Division, CSP Obinna Simeon, immediately moved to the scene and rescued the suspects.

“The suspects are Dickson Andrew Ali, 27, and Matthew Dakum, 34, both males of Tudun Wada, Jos. On interrogation, the suspects confessed that sometime in the month of July, 2022 they were contracted by one Jennifer ‘f’ (surname unknown) to be abducting and sending children to an orphanage in Abuja for the purpose of attracting funds from non-governmental organisations.

“They further disclosed that they succeeded in sending two boys and a girl to the orphanage and had received the sum of three hundred thousand naira (N300,000) only for their role. One of the suspects who was injured by the mob was treated at the police clinic and later discharged. Meanwhile, efforts are on to apprehend Jennifer and the owner of the suspected illegal orphanage at Abuja.”


SOURCE: Sunnewsonline
Attachments:

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

Time to create page: 2.806 seconds
Powered by Kunena Forum