Operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), have rescued five pregnant teenage girls said to be victims of child trafficking in Imo State, South-east Nigeria.
The NDLEA spokesperson, Femi Babafemi, in a statement on Sunday, said the five girls were believed to be used to produce babies for sale – “baby factory”.
Mr Babafemi said the girls were intercepted while they were being relocated from their hideout in the Naze area to the Ikenegbu area – all in Owerri, the state capital, on Wednesday.
The NDLEA spokesperson said the operatives were on their routine patrol along the Aba-Owerri Expressway when they intercepted the girls.
The NDLEA, in its statement, mentioned the names of the five girls but PREMIUM TIMES could not publish them because of their underage status.
The girls claimed they did not know the men who impregnated them, according to the statement.
“The Imo State Command of the NDLEA has since been directed to hand them over to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) for further investigations,” Mr Babafemi said.
The spokesperson said NDLEA operatives, in separate operations across Nigeria, intercepted and seized several illicit drug consignments at different airports and along some highways in the country.
‘Baby factories’ in Nigeria
“Baby factory”, sometimes disguised as an orphanage, is a name given to a facility where traffickers hold women, mostly teenagers, against their will, rape and force them to get pregnant. The newborns at the facility are then sold illegally to adoptive parents.
Girls in such a facility are sometimes forced into child labour and prostitution.
A recent investigation uncovered how a supposed Christian orphanage in Anambra State, another state in the South-east, was illegally selling babies between N1.5 million and N2 million, depending on a baby’s gender.
The investigation also revealed how the sales were executed with the collusion of the officials of the Nigerian police and the judiciary.
