Child Thieves On the Increase in Diobu Community

…2 To 3chidren Missing Each Day

Some children in the Diobu axis of Port Harcourt City Local Government Area of Rivers state, are now living in fear following the invasion of the area by child traffickers and kidnappers whose activities has increased in recent time.

The child traffickers this publication has learnt are now disguised as philanthropists and mothers care mostly operating as Orphanage Homes -with an opposite mindset.

Recall that on 14th of July ,2003 the Nigeria government created the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), with the intention of addressing the scourge of trafficking in persons.

However, it seems with the creation of the agency the scourge and the intention which the body was set up is yet to address the issue even with countless children missing daily. Although many respondents have cited poverty and economic challenges confronting the nation as immediate and root causes of the ugly development that is gradually eating up the system in the country.

But outside this, a lot of children in Diobu, an urban populated area mostly housing some low-income earners, are missing on a daily basis resulting in bad parental training and lack of care as some sources have alleged.

also, the argument about the issue of missing children is not only predicated on bad parental care, but on the gradually of good and moral training that was know in the pass even though a lots of young men nowadays are so much attached with the mindset of the “quick rich syndrome”

Another source who did not want her name mentioned equally confirmed that there is no day that passes that a mother wouldn’t cry of her child missing even with the heavy presence of an organised Vigilante and say about four Police Division scattered around the area.

The prevailing circumstances has forced many families to be on the lookout even with the associate terror and the rise in young men joining money ritual popularly called “yahoo yahoo”

The Rivers state police and the NAPTIP are yet to make an official statement on the menace of child trafficking and the numbers of children disappearing every day.