Sore child

•The parents who sold a child to heal a sore reflect irresponsibility

Whatever led Richard and Chidinma Benson to sell their day-old baby, their action was an unjustifiable abdication of parental responsibility. The police arrested the couple for selling their child for N250, 000 in Afam, in the Oyigbo Local Government Area of Rivers State.

After giving birth to a boy, on October 7,  at a maternity home in Afam, said to be owned by a quack nurse, Chidinma allegedly sold her baby to one Rose Onyia. The buyer reportedly resold the baby to one Eucharia Jaja for N550, 000. The baby was again sold to an unidentified buyer in Lagos. The Deputy Commissioner of Police, IGP Monitoring Unit, Benneth Igwe, said: “Our operatives are on the trail of the last buyer to rescue the baby.”

It is shocking and sad that the innocent infant was treated like an object for sale. The identified buyers were women, and the baby changed hands in a chain of transactions. The hard-hearted and business-minded women involved in the serial sale of Baby Benson behaved below human standards.

Interestingly, the couple gave reasons for selling their child, but their explanations are unreasonable. Chidinma said: “We sold our baby to one woman (Rose Onyia). I have four children and one is late. The baby was a day old when we sold him for N250, 000. I did it with my husband’s approval. We wanted to leave the village because we were living in poverty. My husband was a wheelbarrow pusher and we believed that if we sold the baby, we would have enough money to come to a town in Umuahia or Port Harcourt.”

Her husband, Richard, was quoted as saying:  “My wife had a big sore on one of her legs and we needed money to treat the wound. At a point, my wife could not walk; that was when we decided to sell the baby boy after he was born.”

The police said the couple and 13 suspected child traffickers were arrested in Oyigbo and Ikwerre local government areas. One of those arrested had allegedly sold another child for N750, 000. The police also said the child trafficking group had sold many children within and outside the country. The child traffickers allegedly lured pregnant women to illegal maternity homes where their babies were sold after birth.

These arrests are appropriate. The law enforcement authorities have a duty to tackle the commoditisation of children. There can be no justification for the sale of children, or any human being for that matter.

The Bensons blamed their bad deed on poverty. Their story is redolent of the sensational case of the man who abandoned his five-year-old son for a bag of rice in Kano two years ago. He had also blamed his scandalous action on poverty. The man, identified as Mallam Yusuf Bala, had approached the rice seller, Alhaji Suleiman Bagudu, at Singer Market, Fagge Local Government Area of Kano State. He wanted to buy a bag of rice, N14, 000 per 50kg bag, but said he didn’t have enough money to pay for it and would need to go home to get more money. He had left his son with the rice seller.

However, six hours after, Bala had not returned and the rice seller became suspicious. The rice seller eventually got the boy to take him to their residence at the abattoir area of Koki in Dala Local Government Area of the state. Bala reportedly admitted that he had abandoned his son for the bag of rice.

It is easy and convenient for perpetrators of such acts to blame socio-economic conditions, but that can’t be an excuse. Parental responsibility means that children’s rights must be respected, including their right to human identity and to be protected from abuse and harm. The society must uphold these rights.