A serving commissioner in the cabinet of Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai, Hafsat Baba has said women are now offering their daughters to bandits in exchange for money in the state.
“I see women even giving their children to the bandits to go and sleep with the bandits in order to make money,” she said while speaking at the meeting of the National Council on Women Affairs held in Abuja on Wednesday.
According to TheCable, the commissioner for human services and social development expressed concerns with how some of the girls have been let loose by their parents to roam about and seek alms in the streets.
Baba lamented that some of the girls were being trafficked from one state to another to do menial jobs, including becoming breadwinners for their parents that were supposed to cater for them.
“We have talked about insecurity, but we also have a little thing to blame. What about these informants? They are from us, they inform the bandits because they have made it a business,” he said.
“If you look at our streets, you will see them going about with their little bowls and the most disturbing thing is that the children have now become the breadwinners of the family.
“Even apart from insecurity, we have these children on the street that hawk and engage in all sorts of menial jobs. Our young girls were being taken from their community, from their states to another state to go and become baby nurses, they cook and sweep.
“This also stops them from going to school apart from the insecurity we are talking about because that means that the child is not secured. If a child becomes the breadwinner of a family, what is the essence of the parents? What are the responsibilities of the parents?
“These are all things we need to sit down and look at deeply. How does it affect the girl child? How does it also affect the family collectively? Whatever intervention we are doing, we also need to learn from each other.”
The commissioner added it was the collective of everyone, including parents, community, government and religious leaders, to ensure children, particularly the girl child is safe.
“It is our collective responsibility to ensure that we keep our children safe. Safety is very key both in school and at home. With the recent insecurity, it is now a wake-up call for us to be more vigilant as government, parents, community and religious leaders. Security is everybody’s business. Without security, children cannot go to school.”
