Just found the following highly disturbing report in today's Guardian. I have searched within me to try and find a possible explanation for this despicable act, and as I type I'm none the wiser. Do these reprobates know anything about the Igbo philosophies and ideaologies that say: "Nwa ka ego" and "onye nwere nmadu ka onye nwere ego". Chei, ndi-Igbo no na nsogbu oh !
The Guardian Online
Saturday, June 2, 2001 Syndicate smashed! *28 victims rescued By Chuks Collins, Onitsha
OUTRAGE and shock reigned yesterday when a child trafficking and prostitution syndicate, laundering about 28 children, was smashed at a Motherless Babies’ Home in Idemili North Council Area of Anambra State. Subsequently, the teenage victims were moved to a rehabilitation home at Awka and the affected SOS village ordered shut. Already, four people, including a medical doctor, nursing sister and staff of the Council, have been apprehended by the police in connection with the incident. Anambra State’s newly appointed Women Affairs Commissioner, Mrs. Genevieve Ekwodi was believed to have played a role in bursting the racket. She said police and her ministry are digging into the matter but that preliminary reports indicated that “more arrests are likely to be made.” Among the child trafficking victims are pregnant teenage girls said to have been rescued from “their gestation camp”. Mrs. Nneme Mbadinuju, wife of Anambra State Governor, reacting to the incident, said “twelve babies have been recovered and an unspecified number of ‘baby-making pregnant girls’ have been liberated from the camp where they are quartered over a gestation period to mature”. Visibly angry and fuming, she however refused to say more about what she called “the scandalous and greed-driven misconduct” of the racketeers. The nursing sister ‘in-charge’ of the child trafficking camp was believed to be responsible for feeding the camp with pregnant young girls, house helps, run-away urchins and layabouts who are encouraged to enlist the camp for an unspecified gestation period. There they see to the girls’ care until delivery. In return these inmates are paid amounts ranging from eight to N15,000 for unspecified services. On delivery, the teenagers are said to be prevented from seeing their babies “even for a moment’s glance”. The idea, said a source, is to prevent the young mothers “from recognising them in future.” The babies are later sold to the highest bidders which include childless and needy couples, for as much as N50,000. Fast-track business executives are also believed to buy them for ritual purposes “to enrich them” or to be kept as slaves. Presently, the state government has sent consignments of beverages, foodstuffs and sanitary materials because according to Mrs. Mbadinuju, “the act was shameful, scandalous, embarrassing and inexcusable.” Rights groups and the international community have condemned the incident. The state’s information commissioner described the racket as “unimaginable, and shocking”. Meanwhile, the police at Awka are investigating the incident.
___________________ Awo's political idea was based on the assumption that any town beyond Owo was Igbo or Hausa. Awo was not socialised; he was not a good mixer because he did not have the opportunity, which the secondary school offered. ~TOS Benson, Baba Oba of Lagos
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This is revulsive, to say the least! Now the perpetrators and those who aid and abait such evil, are the ones who want Biafra Actualization derailed. Their motives are sinister.
Where are the ohanEZE group? What's their intake and contribution on this vileful abomination going on right under their noses? My gut feeling tells me that "money bags" in high places are involved in this. Therefore, I won't be surprised at all, if nothing is heard ever again, about the follow up on this case.
Those Ibos, like Mbadinuju, Jim Nwobodo, Okadigbo, Anyim, Ekwueme, and their whole lot of their criminally-minded supporters should hang their "Judas" heads in shame. If they get away with turning pubescent Igbo girls into prostitutes and child-slave producers, tomorrow they'd get up and spew trash about the integrity of the Igbo women.
I say to you all....those who condone, aid and abait in this accursed act; what you sow, you shall surely reap! If not in this life time, it will be in your next.
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When the infamous Otokoto kidnapped innocent children, butchered them and sold their organs, many hailed him as a true mafia including the so-called authorities. Some who saw his gruesome acts never cared to take action until it became too late.
Posts: 481 | From: Buffalo, New York USA | Registered: Mar 2001
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This is nauseating to say this least. When you have police department that is busy chasing MASSOB members around instead of criminals this is the end result. Criminals will continue to have a field day in Nigeria because there is nobody to check their atrocities.
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Hahaha! So na so una be. Una get wahala for home, una come say na Obasanjo una wan fight. Well, well, may be Obasanjo should send mobile police to arrest the people who are doing these bad things. Hahaha!
Posts: 213 | Registered: May 2001
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Bamidele: The difference is that in Igboland, we recognize this for the atrocity that it is. You Yorubas would bury your heads in the sand and pretend that nothing happened. Shame on you.
Posts: 84 | Registered: Mar 2001
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Another twist to this tale. I think I'll stop acting on anything I read from this yeye naija newspapers: I'm very sorry I led you all astray in my zeal and enthusiasm to address the ills of our hallowed society. I am deeply sorry. Now, we wait until "they" finish slugging it out.
The Guardian Tuesday, June 5, 2001 Council faults reports on child trafficking, prostitution
From Chu Collins, Onitsha
FOLLOWING the reported allegation of child-trafficking and prostitution levelled against Idemili North Local Council-run Umuoji Motherless Babies Home, the chairman of the council, Okey Muo-Aroh at the weekend described the charges as "false and a deliberate set-up."
Defending the council over the issue during an interview with journalists in Awka, Muo-Aroh said the charges were a deliberate attempt by Anambra State government to politically victimise the council.
While explaining the genesis of what warranted the indictment, he claimed that Governor Chimaraoke Mbadinuju, at a point in time, was unequivocal in asserting that he would fight any council chairman adjudged to be "carvotting with detractors."
The council chairman claimed further that the government named his council and four others in the category to be dealt with.
According to him, the motherless babies home run by the council couldn't have deviated into child-trafficking and prostitution since the wife of the state governor on an unscheduled visit to the centre, recently confessed that it was the best and well-kept.
He added further that the state first lady even gave the centre an award of merit wondering "how come such centre deviated so soon."
Muo-Aroh averred that "an innocent advice by one of my staff to a member of the public she met in the course of her duties led to the closure of the centre."
He insisted that since the centre is owned and run by his council which is a distinct arm of government, a formal contact or effort in that direction should have been made by the state's ministry of women affairs to intimate him or his wife as the chairperson in charge of the centre on the issue before the centre was sealed-off.
"All I got on Friday was a back dated 29 May 2001 letter informing me that they have closed the centre," he added.
He revealed that they even had to break protocol and "arrested my staff without recourse to me or any other member of my council."
Also, the wife of the council chairman, Mrs. Muo-Aroh, insisted, just like her husband, that no child trafficking or prostitution took place at the centre.
She, however, expressed fear for the 28 inmates that were forcefully taken away by agents of the state government.
Meanwhile, the council chairman who has sworn to go for the children if the government agents did not return them by Tuesday, also declared his intention to take the state government to court over the matter, adding that his lawyers have been briefed to commence legal proceedings against one Genevieve Ekwochi "for libellous news reports and pronouncements on the matter."
Meanwhile, the Police Public Relations Officer, Yemi Ajayi confirmed that the council's principal welfare officer Ifeoma Nwalusi was innocent of the allegation.
The PPRO hinted further that the principal suspect, Miss Ijeoma Ejiofor, a staff of Onitsha North Council who earlier this year visited Nwalusi at Ogidi with a young pregnant girl seeking help was still under investigation.
___________________ Awo's political idea was based on the assumption that any town beyond Owo was Igbo or Hausa. Awo was not socialised; he was not a good mixer because he did not have the opportunity, which the secondary school offered. ~TOS Benson, Baba Oba of Lagos
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Ohafia, Thanks for the clarification (counter) report. I sincerely hope that they do something about that oozing sore called Mbadinuju. Anambra indigenes should not fold their hands and watch this man on his continuous flagrant mockery and tarnishment of Ndigbo culture and image.
The fabricated news he created about the enslavement, prostitution, and child slavery of Igbo pubescent girls is an abominable affront. Its unacceptable to let him and his cronies get away with it.
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