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Missing children sold as slaves?
30/01/2002 23:18 - (SA)
Lagos - Social workers in Lagos are concerned about a huge number of children who are believed to be alive, but who have not been returned to their parents, the Red Cross said on Wednesday. Nigeria is known as a link in a major West African child trafficking network.
More than 1 100 people remained missing after deadly blasts at a Lagos armoury, but many children among them may be alive and held for unknown reasons by security officials.
"We have found situations that are very abnormal. There is more to this than meets the eye," said Nigerian Red Cross spokesperson Patrick Bawa.
"There are security officials who have children in their custody and they don't want to release them to us," he said. "This is making our job very difficult."
Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the allegation.
Children vanished from police station
Bawa said witnesses had reported over 1 000 children at the Oduduwa police station in Ikeja on Sunday night, but Red Cross workers, who arrived the next morning, were told they had gone.
"When we went there in the morning, police in Oduduwa said the children had been there, but they had left," he said.
Children 'forcibly' removed
The independent Vanguard newspaper reported on Wednesday that 172 people, mostly women and children, who sheltered in a Roman Catholic church on Sunday night had been forcibly removed by armed soldiers on Monday.
The paper published the names, and in some cases, addresses of the 172 as compiled by parish priest Father Roderick Crawley, whom the Vanguard said sheltered them.
Father Crawley could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for the Catholic Secretariat said he only knew that some children took refuge at the church on Sunday.
Bawa would not speculate on the intentions of those allegedly holding the children, but requested: "People who are holding children should please take them to the Red Cross."
A social worker, who asked not to be named said: "This cannot be good news in a country where child theft and trafficking are common."
Death toll expected to increase
More than 600 people were known to have died following the explosions and fire at the army weapons dump on Sunday in a crowded district of Lagos.
But as pressure increased on authorities to explain the disaster, pictures and witness accounts suggested the death toll could soar. Newspapers said the final figure could be more than 2 000 dead, in addition to the destruction of numerous of buildings.
Poorly equipped mortuaries have been stretched to the limit and attendants said they feared decomposing bodies could spark an epidemic in the metropolis of over 10 million people.
'Bleached bodies' pulled from canal
Many of the dead, including hundreds of children, drowned in two canals near the armoury as smoke billowed and rockets rained down on stampeding crowds fleeing the disaster.
Amateur divers, with no assistance from the government, kept up a desperate search in the murky canals. Four bleached bodies were pulled out, one of them just as Senate President Pius Anyim arrived to assess the catastrophe.
Relatives watching from the banks of the canal, passed the hat for donations for the volunteer divers.
President criticised
President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has faced fierce criticism over the location of the armoury in a crowded district and over government handling of the tragedy, ordered a review of arms storage by the military.
He said the Red Cross had "expressed its disaffection" to the commandant of the military cantonment in the Lagos district of Ikeja, where the armoury fire sent bombs flying on Sunday.
Obasanjo announced official donations to an emergency disaster relief agency totalling 300 million naira ($2.6 million).
"I have directed all military installations to review current policy and practices of storing explosives and other hardware," he said while inaugurating the agency.
Inability to deal with calamity
Anyim voiced anger over the government's apparent inability to deal with calamities in Africa's most populous country of over 110 million people.
"We have no rescue operation solidly in place. It is a pathetic situation," he said. "This accident is an eye-opener."
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