MAGAZINE
By PALANG KASMI
On February 12, 2026, the Plateau State Gender and Equal Opportunities Commission recorded another milestone in its anti-trafficking fight as five children, among them twins, who were being trafficked en route Jos to Calabar, Cross River State, were successfully rescued.
Heaving a sigh of relief as she spoke to journalists, Chairperson of the commission, Barr. Olivia Dazyam, disclosed that the rescue operation was made possible following a tip-off at the Ngo Talatu Jang Motor Park, located in Jos South Local Government Area (LGA).
This led the Commission, in collaboration with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), security agencies and the Joint Task Force on Human Trafficking in Plateau State, to immediately swing into action, leading to the arrest of the suspects.
Among the suspects arrested, who had given out the children, were the connectors, parents and a grandmother. As they answered questions from newsmen, one of the suspects and connectors, Mrs Lydia Bulus, revealed that her daughter was already in Calabar living with an Igbo woman. As a benefactor who was already benefitting from the ‘good cause’, she said she was aiding her sister to also send her children to Calabar.
Lydia disclosed that, so far, she had aided three Plateau children to travel to Calabar in search of greener pastures, and the number would have increased to eight if not for her arrest at the park. Lydia also said that, out of her four children, she had given out one of them—who was not her biological child—to the woman in Calabar and believed she was schooling there. She also said she is convinced by the arrangement, and that is why she has aided her friend to equally send her son to Calabar.
“I’m the one that took her son to Calabar, so she went and saw him faring well, then she came back to Jos and said she will send two more of her children to the woman in Calabar. The Calabar woman, a nurse by profession, sent N30,000 transport money to her to send the children, and gave me N5,000 ‘chop money’,” Lydia explained.
Another suspected connector of the deal gone wrong, Linda Monday, who lives in Utan, Jos North LGA, said her sister, Lydia Bulus, had informed her of the benevolence of the Calabar woman who is already sponsoring her 14-year-old daughter in school.
“Therefore, realising how my brother’s children are struggling to pay school fees and are not in school, I took two of my brother’s children, his 5-year-old twins, to send to the woman in Calabar, but we were arrested.”
Deceptive offers, parental desperation
A parent, Esther Solomon, a Jos-based tailor, stated before her arrest that she had concluded arrangements to take two of her biological children to Calabar because a woman there offered to help her enrol them in school.
Asked if she knew the woman, Esther said she had never met her. When she was asked why she was taking such a huge risk by releasing her children to a stranger in another state, she said it was because she learnt that the children over there were doing well.
Also speaking, Esther’s husband, a welder, Ahmadu Solomon, said he was informed that his children would be taken to Calabar but had never met the woman. He also said his wife had informed him about the woman and they both agreed to send their son to her.
Mr Solomon, however, claimed that although he had given approval for his son to be taken to Calabar, sadly, he did not have any information about the woman. However, when he was asked why, as a welder, he and his wife, a tailor, were not committing to pay their child’s school fees but decided instead to send him to another state into the hands of a stranger, he admitted that they had made a mistake.
Also narrating her own story to newsmen, Esther James said she was given a juicy offer and told that her 12-year-old daughter would be sent to school for free in Calabar. Therefore, as a struggling mother who fries and sells a popular snack, ‘akara’, and has been neglected by her husband to fend for her children, she took the offer. Esther disclosed that she was separated from her husband and that he was not aware of her decision.
Reports indicate that organised syndicates involved in trafficking children are on the increase. Key trafficking routes, where children are often trafficked from local communities to major cities in Nigeria, include Lagos, Anambra and Port Harcourt.
There, children are frequently trafficked for child exploitation, forced labour in illegal mining sites, domestic servitude and prostitution, among other inhuman activities.
Speaking on the recent arrest, Dazyam expressed disappointment over the increasing incidences of human trafficking in Plateau State. She lamented that despite all the sensitisation efforts of her organisation and stakeholders against the practice, parents were still giving out their children to be trafficked out of the state to unknown destinations.
Dazyam lamented: “This is really sad; despite the awareness and sensitisation that we have done, and the number of people we have arrested in connection with the movement of our children to unknown destinations, some people of Plateau State are still doing it. This morning, together with the wife of the chairman, Bassa Local Government, and the staff of NAPTIP, we acted on a tip-off and rescued these children.”
She disclosed that her organisation received information in the morning about a suspected case of movement of Plateau children at the Ngo Talatu Jang Park. “So we pleaded with the park authorities to hold on so that we can get there and rescue the children and, if possible, get the perpetrators to our office to answer some questions. We are glad we arrived on time to save the situation,” Dazyam said.
Mapping the crisis: High-risk areas
High-risk areas in Plateau State identified as transit points for child trafficking syndicates, based on reported raids, rescues and statements from state officials, are Riyom, Bassa, Langtang South, Wase and Mikang LGAs.
According to experts, the perpetrators or connectors of human trafficking are not far away; they are people who live in our communities and around us or come as organisations. They usually come with juicy offers to parents for a job and a better life for the children, after which they lure parents, guardians and families into releasing their children to them, usually through connectors.
“It is very sad that today we’re together with the children, suspects, and parents who gave their children to be taken to unknown places,” the Gender Commission Chair, Dazyam, said, lamenting that in virtually all the LGAs in the state, there were perpetrators engaging in trafficking.
“But we must work together to fish them out,” she stated, emphasising that the anti-trafficking law is very clear about the crime, which is a serious offence.
“How are you about to embark on a journey with children barely 3 years old? They are leaving their parents and communities behind. What kind of life are they going to have there?” Dazyam lamented, stating that security officers were going to carry out more investigations to get more information from the perpetrators and get them to unveil details about the number of children already trafficked out of the state and where they are, so as to get them back.
Plateau State has been identified as a high-risk area for human trafficking, often ranking among the top three states in the country for trafficking rates. The situation has been described by stakeholders as a “pandemic” due to the high volume of cases, particularly involving the trafficking of children and women for forced labour, sexual exploitation and illegal adoption.
For example, in February 2026, in a major sting operation, the Plateau State Anti-Human Trafficking Taskforce arrested 184 suspects and rescued several minors in Jos and surrounding areas. In December 2024, a child trafficking ring syndicate was uncovered that had trafficked at least 13 children, with prices ranging from ₦350,000 to ₦750,000.
Also, during rescue operations in 2025, the Plateau State Gender and Equal Opportunities Commission reported stopping the trafficking of 106 persons and reuniting 46 others with their families over a two-year period, alongside handling 155 cases of abandoned parental responsibility.
Similar statistics on interstate trafficking in early 2025 indicate that 16 children aged four to nine were rescued from Bassa Local Government Area while being trafficked to Anambra State.
A call for community vigilance
Based on recent 2025–2026 reports, human trafficking and child exploitation are significant security concerns in Plateau State, driven by poverty and displacement. The state government has established a dedicated anti-human trafficking task force to address the issue.
To halt the increasing menace and practice, the Gender Commission Chairperson, Dazyam, made a call after the recent rescue operations for everyone at the community level and all stakeholders to unite and stop the practice. She praised security agencies, NAPTIP, the wife of the Bassa LGA Chairman and the leadership of motor parks in Plateau State for collaborating with the government and the commission to record more success stories in apprehending traffickers.
“I want to call on the people of Plateau State to unite and say no to these activities,” Dazyam said.
While assuring that the Commission has vowed to continue its efforts to combat human trafficking and protect the rights of children in Plateau State, Dazyam praised the wife of the chairman of Bassa Local Government Area, Mrs Miriam Riti, for her prompt response to the situation. She advised parents and all those seeking adoption to follow due process when adopting or relocating children, saying, “Poverty is not an excuse for releasing your child to somebody you don’t know.”
On her part, Dr Mrs Miriam Riti, while reacting to the incident, said it is heartbreaking and disheartening to witness the sad development.
“I got a call concerning this trafficking of some children from my local government. So I came to the Gender Commission, and I saw these little kids. It’s really, really disheartening that in Bassa Local Government, these kinds of cases keep reoccurring, despite the awareness campaign, the effort, and the little empowerment we give to the parents to enable them to do something so that they can make a little sacrifice for their children.”
While making a plea to parents and people in her LGA to stop the inhuman practice, Riti said: “Basically, from experience, I can say that it’s mostly as a result of the abdication of duties by the parents. We pray that God will continue to touch the parents, because now we’ve done our part, and we’ll continue to do it.”
The Plateau State Government has, in a bid to fight the menace, called on all stakeholders and members of the general public to report suspicious activities and the movement of children to the Ministry of Women Affairs or the Gender Commission, if this practice is to become a thing of the past.