Five-year jail term for keepers of domestic servants in Nigeria

From The Punch
By Kunle Adeyemi

April 12, 2006—Nigerians who employ and keep children under the age of 18 years as domestic servants will now spend five years behind the bars if caught and prosecuted.

Although the offenders are liable to a fine of N100,000, some could pay the fine and still be sent to jail, depending on the circumstances surrounding the commission of the offence and the judge's discretion.

If the offender is a corporate entity, the fine is N250,000. The assets of corporate entities and individuals found to have been acquired with the money from human trafficking will also be forfeited for the rehabilitation of the victims.

These are some of the amendments made to the Act establishing the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters.

The law, Trafficking in Persons Prohibition Law Enforcement and Administration, 2003, was amended and it came into effect on December 7, 2005.

The Executive Secretary of NAPTIP, Mrs. Carol Ndaguba, who spoke on the new law at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, on Tuesday, said the Act also criminalised the keeping of girls under the age of 18 years in brothels for prostitution.

The new Act says, "Any person who keeps a brothel or allows persons under the age of 18 in a brothel with the intent of engaging such person in acts of prostitution, commits an offence and is liable on conviction to imprisonment for 14 years without an option of fine."

Besides, the operators of such brothels will have their property confiscated and forfeited to the Federal Government.

Ndaguba explained that the law against the keeping of domestic servants was to deter people from depriving the children their rights, especially the right to education and prevention from child labour.

The NAPTIP boss said in the last two years of the existence of the agency, it had not only arrested child trafficking suspects, it "investigated about 250 cases, prosecuted seven successfully to conviction and has about 18 cases pending in many courts nationwide.

"The performance of the agency within one year of its existence has evidently boosted the country's rating from tier 2-watch-list to tier 2, by the United States of America, Department of State's ratings (2004)."

NAPTIP, which has shelters in Lagos, Benin, Uyo, Kano and Abuja, has sheltered and rehabilitated 460 victims of child trafficking since 2004, the executive secretary noted.

The agency's Head of Investigations, Alhaji Mohammed Babandede, said it was difficult to give an accurate statistics of trafficked persons nationwide because "it is an under-cover crime."

But he observed that 40 per cent of street children in the country were trafficked. He added that an American research also showed that between 600 and 800 persons were trafficked across international borders daily and 80 per cent of the figure constituted women.