Mary
It’s
still a long road to freedom for the 12-year-old Bakassi refugee girl
whose father sold into servitude, as the Cross River State Government
has yet to intervene in her situation, TEMITAYO FAMUTIMI reports
Twelve-year-old Mary Okon was washing a heap of dirty clothes when she sighted her refugee father some 100 metres away.
She abandoned the laundry and welcomed
her father with a warm embrace. Mary was seeing her father for the first
time in the New Year.
For two consecutive years running, Mary, a
Junior Secondary School drop-out, had not spent the Yuletide with her
immediate family.
Mary’s parents, Okon and Christiana
Mary’s father, Okon, had literally sold
her into servitude after using the young girl as collateral to secure a
N600,000 loan from a contractor with the Calabar Urban Development
Agency, Mr. Asuquo Etim.
Okon, a Bakassi refugee, secured the loan
from Etim in installments in 2013, with a view to saving the life of
his first daughter, Blessing, who was diagnosed with blood cancer.
Blessing, however, died of cancer in September 2013, despite efforts made to sustain her life.
Still in the warm embrace of her father,
it took the young girl some time before she recognised the presence of
this correspondent during a visit to Etim’s residence on 6, Orok Effiom
Street, off Atimbo Road, Calabar, Cross River State.
“Uncle, you are welcome,” Mary said, as she returned to her the laundry.
Victim of child labour
Soon, two voices emerged from Etim’s
one-room apartment. Two teenagers — a boy and a girl — were overheard
engaging in a heated debate over a Nollywood movie while Mary was
washing. The two of them were Etim’s children.
Etim
As our correspondent and Okon took a seat
in front of the one-room apartment which Etim and his family share, the
creditor beckoned on the young girl to stop her chores.
After offering Mary’s father a cup of
water, Etim enquired if he had, indeed, paid him a visit with a view to
repaying the N600,000 loan which he secured from him in installments
between April and May 2013.
Okon shook his head vigorously in
response, indicating a “no.” Following Okon’s response, Etim began
lamenting the economic hardship he had been passing through in the last
eight months.
He argued that there was no better time
for him to recover the debt than now, adding that he was no longer
receiving contracts from the Calabar Urban Development Agency like
before.
He stated that he had had to relocate
from the three-bedroom flat he previously occupied on Nyahasang Street
to the one-room apartment where he and his family now live.
To address the financial need occasioned
by the lack of regular contract jobs, Etim explained that he and his
wife, Patience, agreed to engage Mary in street trading.
No money for education
He stated that he and his wife, recently,
expanded the ware Mary hawks to include palm oil and garri, in addition
to bottled water which was the only item she previously sold on the
streets of Calabar.
Etim said, “I gave him (Okon) my money
and even my wife who pitied their condition gave out part of her
business capital to him. And because they didn’t have any property, they
used Mary as collateral for the loan.
“But as you can see, I am also facing
financial problems now and that was why my family relocated from the
three-bedroom flat we used to stay on Nyahasang Street to this one-room
apartment where we now reside.
“We don’t have money to fend for
ourselves anymore and that is why Mary has to sell small things like
bottled water, garri and palm oil to feed the family. I don’t have any
plan for her to go to school because I don’t have the money.”
Etim insisted that Mary would not be released to her father until the N600,000 loan was repaid.
Patience
The creditor’s wife, Patience, admitted that it was true that Mary only eats once in a day.
“She eats once in a day and it is because
I don’t have money to feed her three times daily. My own children don’t
eat well, too,” the 35-year-old woman said.
A teenage neighbour of the Etims who craved anonymity told The PUNCH that Mary hardly has time for leisure.
“Whenever I am going to school in the
morning, Mary usually goes out to hawk. She rarely plays around with us
because she returns in the evening. But I don’t know if they maltreat
her or not,” the female teenager said.
While discussions with Etim were still
underway, Mary was seen preparing her wares — palm oil packaged in
bottles — preparatory to hit the streets. Okon immediately wore a
pensive mood as his daughter stood close to the goods as if waiting for
her dad to take his leave before beginning the day’s round of street
trading.
Her future ambition
In a chat with The PUNCH, Mary said she
would be very happy to return to her family who reside at the Bakassi
refugee camp inside the St. Mark Primary School, Akwa Ikot Eyo Edem, in
the Akpabuyo Local Government Area of Cross River State.
When asked about her future ambition, the
12-year-old said she would love to become a lawyer. However, she
couldn’t give reasons why she was choosing the profession over others.
She said, “When I go out to sell palm
oil, I will not return until 7pm. I really want to reunite with my
family again and see if I can still go to school. I will love to become a
lawyer when I grow up.”
Speaking with our correspondent at the
Bakassi Refugee Camp, Mary’s mother, Christiana, said her daughter had
always made it a sing-song that she would want to become a legal
practitioner in the future.
Stating that she did not willingly sell
Mary into servitude, Christiana lamented that using her as collateral
was the only option she and her husband were left with at the time.
Insisting that she was not heartless,
Christiana said, “I wasn’t really happy with the arrangement, but using
Mary as collateral was the best option we had at the time. Blessing, her
elder sister, was already dying and we needed to save her.
“Unfortunately, we lost Blessing to the
cold hands of death. Now, as a mother, I am plagued with two losses. My
first child is dead and I can’t see her anymore; my second daughter is
alive, but I can’t even still get to see her when I want to.
“I want my child to return so that she
can go to school. The future of any child that does not go to school is
not bright and that is why I want her to be educated.
“She has been telling me she wants to
become a lawyer. If she becomes one, I know she would dry my tears and
our status as Bakassi refugees would change for better. I hope
government can help me bring back my daughter.”
What the law says
Mary is one of the 10.5 million children
which the United Nations Children Fund says are out of school in
Nigeria. UNICEF lists child labour, economic hardship and early
girl-child marriage as some of the reasons for low school completion
rate in Nigeria.
A UNICEF statistics note that children
around the world are routinely engaged in paid and unpaid forms of work
that are not harmful to them. However, they are classified as child
labourers when they are either too young to work or are involved in
hazardous activities that may compromise their physical, mental, social
or educational development.
“The prevalence of child labour is
highest in sub-Saharan Africa. In the least developed countries, nearly
one in four children ages five to 14 are engaged in labour that is
considered detrimental to their health and development,” UNICEF notes.
Besides, according to the International
Labour Organisation, the number of working children under the age of 14
in Nigeria is estimated at 15 million.
Quite frankly, 12-year-old Mary falls
into the category of the estimated 15 million children pushed out of
school due to child labour and economic hardship.
Yet, in 2003, the Federal Government
domesticated the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
with the passing into law of the Child Rights Act.
The CRA seeks to regulate and protect the
rights of children, as enshrined in the 1999 constitution and other
subsidiary legislations.
To provide improved legal protection for
the Nigerian child, section 30 of the CRA frowns on the use of minors as
“debt bondage” as in the case of Mary.
It states, “No person shall buy, sell,
hire, let on hire, dispose of or obtain possession of or otherwise deal
in a child. A child shall not be used — as a slave or for practices
similar to slavery such as sale or trafficking of the child, debt
bondage or serfdom and forced or compulsory labour.
“For hawking of goods or services on main
city streets, brothels or highways; or for any purpose that deprives
the child of the opportunity to attend and remain in school as provided
for under the compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act.”
Rights activists weigh in
Indeed, the Act prescribes a jail term of 10 years for anyone found guilty of contravening this section of the law.
But child rights activists have decried
the perceived lack of enforcement of the relevant sections of the Child
Rights Act in the protection of the rights of the Nigerian child.
Lamenting that the legislative instrument
has yet to translate into improved legal protection for Nigerian
children, the Executive Director, Women Empowerment and Legal Aid, Mrs.
Funmi Falana, stated that it was worrisome that Mary had been reduced to
“an article of trade.”
“It is ridiculous. It shouldn’t be heard
of in a civilised country like Nigeria. It should better be heard of in
the jungle. It is very sad,” Falana added.
Noting that the ignorance of the law is
not an excuse, the human rights lawyer said Mary’s parents had
invariably “trampled upon her rights to freedom, dignity as a human
person, and education” by their action.
Falana explained that her organisation
would do everything within its powers to rescue Mary from her abusers
while also pressing for the enforcement of her rights.
“As a human rights organisation, we have
decided to rise against this development. Apart from reaching out to
Mary, we would be petitioning the House of Representatives Committee of
Human Rights to intervene. We would press for her rights,” Falana added.
Chairman of the National Human Rights
Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, was alarmed by the plight of Mary,
asking, “When did human beings become items of property?”
Executive Secretary, Basic Rights
Counsel, Calabar, Cross River State, James Ibor, explained that it was
“mind-boggling and disturbing” that such an incident could happen in
modern day Nigeria.
“This is reprehensible. It is slavery
simplified. Government, non-governmental organisations and other well
meaning Nigerians should mobilise to liberate this girl,” Ibor said.
He expressed concern that Mary might have
been sexually abused by her guardian; adding that it was of utmost
importance that the girl “becomes a human person once again.”
Cross River State Governor Liyel Imoke
The PUNCH visited the Cross
River State Ministry of Social Welfare and Community Development on
January 5 and 6. The commissioner in charge of the ministry, Patricia
Enderly, on the two occasions directed our correspondent to her Special
Assistant, Francis Aribia, for comments.
Aribia told our correspondent that the
state government was already aware of Mary’s plight but he failed to
explain the steps it was planning to take to secure her freedom.
“We bought The PUNCH newspaper the other day (December 30, 2014) and we read Mary’s story,” Aribia acknowledged, but declined to speak further.
Our correspondent reached out to Mary’s
father, Okon, on the telephone on Tuesday morning to ascertain if the
state government had reached out to him or initiated moves to secure the
girl’s freedom.
Okon stated that he had yet to hear from
any government official at the local, state, or federal level about the
case of his daughter. “Nobody has called me. But I know one day, God
will make a way,” he said.
Ibor, the Cross River-based human rights
lawyer, expressed shock that the state government had yet to swing into
action with a view to freeing Mary from the “slavery” she was sold into.
“Where do we go from here? The facilities
to promote child rights are simply not active in Cross River State.
Social welfare is relegated to the background in the state and it is
getting worse by the day.
“Public officials in social welfare
departments shouldn’t be this incompetent and inept when it comes to
child rights issues. Attending to the plight of Mary is one of the basic
and elementary requirements of their job,” Ibor added.
Source:Punch
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