Fake missionary school proprietors have been arrested for trafficking no fewer than 92 children from Adamawa state to different parts of country. According to SaharaReporters.

The children who are between the age of 7 and 13 are said to have been trafficked from Madagali local government area of Adamawa state, one of the formally occupied territories by the Boko Haram insurgents, under the disguise of offering them better lives in the city.

The reports reveals that some of the children are orphans while others are under the care of single parents, all from Madagali Local Government Area.

It was alleged that the traffickers who came pretending to be missionary schools proprietors group, contacted the “Eklisiyan Yan’uwa a Nigeria” (EYN) Church; also known as the Church of the Brethren in Madagali; and offered to help educate the children.

After successfully deceiving the Church and the locals there, the children were taken from Madagali, to Jos, the Plateau State capital, from where they were distributed to willing buyers across the country, with states in the South-East, taking majority of them.

Confirming, the reports, the Commissioner of Police in Plateau state, Sikiru Akande, said the police have rescued some children from suspected traffickers.

The Police is said to have rescued 42 of the children and has arrested four suspects in connection to the crime.

The rescued children were identified as; Dakam Peter ‘m’ 30yrs, Nicolas Vishe ‘m’ 29yrs, Luka Yarima ‘m’ 49yrs and Yusuf Garwa ‘m’ 35yrs.

The police Commissioner said, “We are able to trace some underage children (boys and girls) who are indigenes of Adamawa State that had been taken for child labour across Nigeria. Presently, 24 of them are in our custody; they were rescued from different parts of Nigeria.”

The children who narrated their ordeals said they were taken to different parts of country where their names where changed and subjected to different forms of hard labour without being enrolled in schools as promised.

Elizabeth, 13, said, “I attended school in a makeshift environment during my first two weeks in Enugu, but afterwards I was engaged on a cassava farm.”

Jennifer, who was given Chiamaka as her new Igbo name said she was doing domestic chores in Umuahia. “I was not enrolled in any school at all”, she said.

For seven-year-old Bala Adamu, “they took seven of us from Madagali to Jos, from there we were collected by another man who conveyed us to Kaduna and since then we’ve been working on his farm.”

(SaharaReporters)