The immediate past Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Dame Julie Okah Donli, is currently the Chairman Board of Trustees, United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Trafficking in Persons. In this interview with INNOCENT DURU, the soft spoken legal expert shares painful memories of her interactions with abused female children, her late mother’s battle with kidney failure and her passion for helping the female gender to excel, among other issues.
How was your early life and how did it impact on who you are now?
I was born on December 30, 1966 to the family of Naval Commander Okah. I have nine siblings and my parents ensured that we had the best of everything that they could afford. I lost my mother to kidney failure when I was 18 years old. She was a young and supportive wife who died in her early forties. Her death left a great vacuum in the family but my dad stepped into her shoes and combined the fatherly and motherly roles well.
I had my secondary education in a girls’ school and then proceeded to Zaria where I had my higher institution studies. As a teenager, I read many books that piqued my interest on the issues of gender discrimination and social vices in the society. This interest fueled my active participation in literary clubs and associations that aligned with my vision of contributing my quota to the development of the society. Growing up in a typical African society, I saw how some families treated the girl child as though she was inferior to the male child. I saw women with great potential fading away and relegated to the background because their husbands would not allow them to work. I couldn’t help but appreciate my father for giving all his children equal opportunities.
At that tender age, I could see that children from families such as mine had better self-esteem and excelled academically unlike many of the children from families where daughters and wives were constantly bashed and are underappreciated. I made a resolve then to perform excellently well in my career and subsequently help to pave the way for girls and women to reach for the sky, which is where we all belong.
As NAPTIP DG, what were the challenges you faced, especially from human traffickers?
Confronting evil everywhere comes with challenges, and fighting human trafficking is not an exception. As the director general of NAPTIP, we experienced inadequate funding and other technical and bureaucratic challenges.
Traffickers also fought back tooth and nail by coming up with various new trends to get us off their track, but we were resolute and this paid off as recorded in the outstanding successes I recorded during my tenure.
What was the hardest trafficking case you handled?
We had so many difficult cases to tackle at NAPTIP. Picking out one out of these cases and labelling it hardest is not feasible because all the cases were heart-rending and painful. One of those cases was when we had young girls trapped in various countries and reaching out to them was quite difficult because of some of the challenges I talked about above.
As if the challenges experienced in bringing them back into the country were not enough, my heart broke into a thousand pieces when I heard stories of their experiences outside the shores of Nigeria. Some of the victims had all sorts of physical injuries, including cuts and broken bones and joints. Some were forced to eat feaces and engage in all sorts of dehumanising and unprintable experiences that I would rather not spoil your day with. I picked this as the hardest experience because it was emotionally demanding for me and I had to struggle to keep tears off my eyes when I had one on one interviews with the victims.
Tell us about your new role as the Chairman Board of Trustees UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Trafficking in Persons
The United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund is saddled with the responsibility of providing essential services and direct assistance to victims of human trafficking worldwide. My role as the chairman of the board of trustees is to come up with strategies to grow the trust fund in order to assist more victims of trafficking, especially women and children. UNVTF offers me a global platform to do what I have always loved to do, which is providing humanitarian, financial and legal aid to victims of trafficking in persons.
The menace of child abuse appears not to be abating. What is your take on this?
Child abuse is one scourge that is still eating deeply into the fabric of the society and for me, whether in active public service or not, the passion remains ever strong. Child abuse or child maltreatment is any intentional physical, domestic, sexual, psychological and mental maltreatment of any human below the age of eighteen. Child abuse knows no colour or race or religion, it cuts across different spheres of the country. The upper class who employ the services of underage children as house helps are guilty, so also is the middle class who serve as the agents that bridge the gap between the upper class and the lower class. The lower class are also guilty because as parents, they falter in their responsibilities to their children, which explains why they are ever ready to send out their kids to the streets to hawk and to serve as domestic servants.
How well do you think the country has done in its war against child abuse?
So much has been achieved in tackling the menace of child abuse in the country, but, unfortunately, the storm still rages on. Littering almost all the streets and major roads in Nigeria are children who have no choice but to leave their innocence behind and beg for their daily bread because their parents have more children than they can afford to cater for. As if it is not just enough to go out there under the sun or rain to fend for yourself at such a very tender age, some of these children have masters who take away all proceeds of the day from them in exchange for dilapidated shelters and all sorts of poor living conditions.
The issue of child labour is one fundamental aspect of child abuse in Nigeria. Research has shown that seven out of 10 homes have at some points in their existence employed the services of child domestic help. Most people have this impression that because the child in their custody is the son or daughter of a relation, it cannot be interpreted as child abuse. But like I would always say, when you in any way subject even your own biological child(ren) to any sort of dehumanizing condition, it is child abuse. The fact that you are the biological parent of the child does not make it less of an offence.
Has the mode of operation of child abusers remained the same or has it changed in any way?
In recent times, the menace of child abuse has experienced a dramatic shift in its mode of operation. People are no longer satisfied with turning innocent children into domestic slaves; they have degenerated into using them as sex slaves and even porn stars. The saddest part of this is that in many cases, pedophiles are people who often share blood ties with their victims. You see fathers, mothers, uncles, aunties, nephews, cousins, drivers, etc who ought to serve as knights in shining amour to protect their ward turn to the beast that defile these innocent ones. By this unholy and highly condemnable act, children are exposed to all sorts of health challenges as well as mental and psychological disorders. My heart broke into a million pieces when I read the story of a few months old who had to undergo a corrective surgery on her vagina because she was raped by a man old enough to be her father.
Another worrisome trend in Nigeria is child trafficking with all its attendant consequences. In this situation, young boys and girls below the age of 18 are trafficked out of the country to strange lands, exposing them to all sorts of harm and danger on the road. Most of these children often travel unaccompanied and are exposed to all sorts of harsh weather conditions on the road: pneumonia, cholera, malnutrition, and some are sexually molested and left to die of starvation and diseases when the journey gets tough. The implication of this is that the country continues to lose some of its brightest minds and future leaders.
What are the implications of child abuse for the society?
There are several implications of child abuse, and these implications form the basis of some of the moral and security challenges we are confronted with in Nigeria today. When we have children who have been physically, emotionally, psychologically and mentally battered, they grow into suicidal, depressed and unproductive adults who constitute nuisance to themselves and the society. Today, we have children all over the streets who demand from alms for adults in the most embarrassing manner. Some of these children end up in the wrong company and they are converted into pick pockets, suicide bombers, drug addicts, etc.
A nation which takes for granted the wellbeing of children and youth is actually setting itself up for failure, and this is the reason why we must not relent in tackling this menace.
How well would you say you did as director general of NAPTIP?
As we all know, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons is the government agency saddled with the responsibility of tackling the scourge of human trafficking and other related offences in Nigeria, and I am bold to say that during my time as the director general of NAPTIP, we did surpass expectations and previous achievements. In summary, as at December 2020, NAPTIP had about 6,221 reported cases, 3,658 investigated cases, 5,421 traffickers had been arrested, 304 successful prosecutions, 368 convicted persons as well as 13,555 rescued victims.
As the director general, I championed a lot of anti-child abuse grassroots awareness campaigns on the social media, schools, markets, motor parks, places of worship, etc. We also took the campaign to different media houses including the TVC, NTA, AIT, etc.
Together with my team, we visited different states of the federation with our campaign on the need to stop all forms of child abuse against children and the need for children to be given access to free education as free and affordable education is the right of every child. Parents were also enlightened on the need to only have as many children as they can cater for, as this will help in ensuring that children are not left to fend for themselves a few years after birth.
At NAPTIP, we also provided shelters for victims of abuse and human trafficking who had no accommodation. We understand that fighting such things as human trafficking and child abuse is all encompassing, so we ensured that adequate physical, emotional, psychological, emotional and legal support were always available and accessible.
Officially, my time as the director general of NAPTIP ended in December 2020, but for me, the passion and zeal remains unquenched, so I shall continue to strive for an end to the scourge of child abuse, not only in Nigeria but globally.
You founded the Julie Donli Kidney Foundation, an NGO that supports people with kidney disease. What led to this?
I lost my mother at the age of 18 to kidney failure. She was in her forties and was so full of life and vitality. Her loss created a terrible vacuum not just in the family but also in my heart. Even though we did all we could go save her life, I felt bad that she had to die that way and felt that if we had been proactive enough and had done things differently, she might still be alive. It was a long journey that started in 1981 when she was diagnosed with acute renal failure. She was the first dialysis patient at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
My brother, Charles Okah, who was just 20 years old then, donated one of his kidneys to her. She underwent a kidney transplant in Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai. Her body rejected the kidney even though it was a perfect match and she had to resume dialysis. She died on 15th February, 1984. This terrible and painful experience left an indelible impression on the family’s memory, leading to my brother, Charles, establishing 15 dialysis centres in major teaching hospitals in Nigeria, and this subsequently gave birth to the Julie Donli Kidney Foundation which has the principal mandate of creating kidney health awareness and helping indigent patients get aid for kidney disease and treatment.