Plateau State busts 10-year child labor and trafficking syndicate, rescues 11

Plateau State authorities have arrested 14 people, including three suspected traffickers, and rescued 11 victims in a significant operation targeting an illegal motor park. The park, located in Zawan, Jos South Local Government Area, was allegedly used to traffic children and women to mining camps in Ibadan. The operation followed a tip-off from a community member who noticed the park's unusual operating schedule, exclusively on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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Gentlemen of the press, we decided to call you this afternoon because of a challenging situation that we came across. A member of the Zawan community drew our attention to what, according to him, looked like an illegal motor park. He wanted to find out if we knew about the existence of that park, and he gave me the information that the park operates only on Thursdays and Tuesdays. Thursdays, they would convey passengers to a location in Ibadan… Tuesday, they will now bring back some people into that park and drop them there.

Olivia Dazyam, Special Adviser to Governor Caleb Mutfwang on Gender and Chairperson of the Plateau State Gender and Equal Opportunities Commission, revealed the details. She described how she and her team visited the site and observed vehicles preparing for a night journey, noting the suspicious appearance of some passengers, including young ladies and individuals who seemed to be miners. After confirming the park's illegality with transport authorities, security operatives were alerted.

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I didn’t like the sight of some of the people that I saw there. Some looked like miners, and I also saw young ladies there who were also about to travel.

Dazyam expressed dismay that such an operation could have persisted for nearly a decade. "I'm told that this is a park that has been operating for up to almost 10 years at Zawan Junction," she said, urging the public to remain vigilant and report suspicious activities. Preliminary investigations and interviews indicate that eight of the rescued victims are minors, with two being pregnant women and one a nursing mother.

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The attention of the security was quickly drawn to it, and as I speak now, the police are investigating. I felt that when we have things like this on our hands, we shouldn’t keep quiet. It would appear that, probably, as a result of the silence that we have kept about a lot of negative things happening to us, it has encouraged, in one way or another, the continuity of the abuses against us.

The Commission's intervention highlights a critical issue of child labor and trafficking within the region. The discovery of this decade-old syndicate underscores the challenges faced by authorities in combating such organized criminal activities and the importance of community cooperation in identifying and dismantling these networks.

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I’m told that this is a park that has been operating for up to almost 10 years at Zawan Junction… I still have these expectations that our people should be watchful enough and say something when they see something happening that is not right.