Trading children as commodities in Benue

By Peter Duru

A young girl is told there is a job waiting for her in Lagos, another city or even another country. She is promised good pay, accommodation and a chance to help her family escape poverty. Sometimes, the person making the offer is a relative, a trusted acquaintance or someone introduced by a family member.

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But somewhere along the journey, the promise changes. Her phone may be taken away. She may be moved through unfamiliar routes, transferred from one vehicle to another and eventually taken to a destination she never agreed to visit. For many, they never have the luck of returning home alive to their siblings. Those who are fortunate to reunite with their kinsmen have unsavoury tales to tell. For many vulnerable young Nigerians, that is the beginning of a nightmare of sexual exploitation, forced labour and modern-day slavery.

In Benue, the problem has assumed an especially troubling dimension amid worsening insecurity, displacement and economic hardship. Thousands of residents have been forced from their ancestral communities by violence, leaving families and children struggling for survival in unfamiliar environments. It is in this vulnerability that traffickers are finding opportunities. At 36, anti-trafficking campaigner Sughnen Yaaya has found himself confronting a trade he describes as increasingly organised and difficult to contain. Since March 2026, Yaaya says he has intercepted 573 Benue girls within Nigeria and facilitated the return of 103 others from Ghana, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and other countries. He also claims that about 32 Benue girls have died abroad in circumstances linked to trafficking. “From March till now, I have intercepted 573 girls,” he said. “By interception, I mean that we stop them before they are taken out of the country. We could intercept them at a motor park or somewhere along the route.”

‘Why I do it’

For Yaaya, the decision to take on the campaign was not driven by money or political ambition but by the growing number of vulnerable young people he encountered. He said that while he could not solve the insecurity and kidnapping challenges confronting the state, he believed he could contribute by exposing trafficking networks and warning families about the dangers. His intervention, however, has come at a personal cost. According to him, some alleged traffickers and their families have attempted to intimidate him, while financial constraints have severely limited his operations. “I am very scared. I count my days every day,” he admitted, explaining that he has no personal security and depends largely on God and assistance from individuals who support his work.

His experience provides a glimpse into a much larger problem that has attracted the attention of government agencies, civil society organisations and Nigerians in the diaspora. The Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation Africa, NIDO Africa, has visited Benue twice this year as part of its campaign against human trafficking and drug abuse. During a June sensitisation programme at Government Model Secondary School, Makurdi, its Continental Chairman, Prof. Jude Osakwe, called for legislation imposing stiff penalties on parents and guardians who aid or permit the trafficking of their children.

Osakwe said some families had become accomplices by allowing their children and wards to be taken away under the guise of employment or other opportunities.

“Most of the time, traffickers promise them jobs in restaurants and several other places, but in the end, they are used as sex slaves, prostitutes and for forced labour,” he said.

NIDO

NIDO Africa, according to Osakwe, has rescued many trafficked children in the last two years and established task forces in countries including Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire to strengthen the arrest and prosecution of traffickers.

He said the organisation was also planning vocational and skills acquisition centres for rescued victims because many of them remained vulnerable to re-trafficking when they returned without means of livelihood. “Prevention is better than rescue,” Osakwe said, explaining the decision to take the campaign to secondary schools and other grassroots communities. That emphasis on prevention has become particularly important in Benue, where insecurity has removed thousands of people from their communities and disrupted the lives of children.

The Director of Public Prosecution in the Benue State Ministry of Justice and Secretary of the State Task Force on Human Trafficking, Dooshima Ortsega, described the campaign as timely, noting that many displaced and out-of-school children had become easy targets for traffickers. For children who have lost their homes, schools and familiar surroundings, an offer to travel may sound less like danger and more like an opportunity. The scale of the vulnerability became particularly evident following the attack on Yelewata in June 2025, when hundreds of children were reportedly separated from their communities. The Makurdi Zonal Commander of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Hembadoon Kuma, said more than 400 children were taken away from Yelewata, with the agency subsequently rescuing 100. According to her, 97 of those rescued children had been reunited with their families, while three remained at the NAPTIP shelter as efforts continued to locate their parents. Some of the children had been taken to Abia, Rivers, Imo and Enugu Astates.

For Kuma, the Yelewata experience demonstrates why trafficking cannot be treated as a problem that belongs only to one agency. “Human trafficking cannot be fought by NAPTIP alone. We need stakeholders,” she said, welcoming the collaboration with NIDO Africa and other government and community institutions. That collaboration is already extending to an unlikely frontline: the motor park. Benue Links, the state-owned transport company, has intercepted and transported about 250 trafficked persons or intending victims back to their communities as at August 2026, according to its General Manager, Comrade Alexander Fanafa. At the company’s terminals, monitoring officers have been trained to look closely at adults travelling with children or girls who do not bear the same surname. Where circumstances appear suspicious, the adults and children are separated and questioned to establish their relationship, destination and purpose of the journey.

Suspected cases are subsequently handed over to NAPTIP, the police, the DSS or other relevant agencies. Fanafa said the company had also been directed to transport legitimate trafficking victims found anywhere in the country back to Benue free of charge and facilitate their reintegration with their families.

Benue Links

The intervention has come at a cost to the company. Fanafa said Benue Links had virtually lost the profit from its Lagos route because rescued victims were transported without payment. But beyond the financial cost is a deeper human cost. A rescued girl returning home may have lost months or years of her life. She may return without the money she was promised, carrying the psychological scars of exploitation and uncertainty about what comes next. Without support, she may once again become vulnerable to the same people or another trafficking network.

This is why the intervention of the wife of the Tor Tiv, Prof. Felicia Ayati, has focused not only on receiving rescued victims but also on helping them rebuild their lives. Fanafa said she had taken an interest in victims brought to the Tor Tiv’s palace, speaking with them, supporting them and encouraging them to acquire skills before they are reunited with their families.

Speaking on the Benue situation, the Secretary of the Campaign for Equal Rights and Opportunities for all Nigerians (CERON), Francis Odiir, identified poverty and insecurity as two major factors fueling the illicit trade in the state. “Benue has become the epicentre of human trafficking in the country, if we go by the recent figures we are seeing all over the place. Sadly, the majority of the victims are in their teens because they are mostly used for sexual exploitation, and the trade is being fuelled by worsening poverty and insecurity in the state. The state government owes the people a duty to step in and do so decisively, and quickly too,” he said.

For Benue, the growing trafficking crisis therefore presents a challenge that goes beyond arrests and rescues. It is a battle over the future of children whose vulnerability has been intensified by insecurity, displacement, poverty and the absence of opportunities. As traffickers continue to exploit desperation, the real test for Benue will be whether the state and its partners can close the gaps that make vulnerable people easy targets, before another child is persuaded to board a vehicle in search of a future that turns into a nightmare.

Vanguard News

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