Man arrested trafficking 14-year-old daughter to Nigeria to marry

The Donkokrom District Police Command in the Afram Plains North of the Eastern Region has arrested a man of Fulani extraction for attempting to traffic his 14-year-old daughter to Nigeria into forced marriage.

Information gathered indicates the suspect, Abubakar Iddrisu, was arrested on May 2, 2019, by Police Personnel on duty on the Adeambra/Donkorkrom road while transporting the victim on a motorbike towards the pontoon landing shore at Agordeke to be ferried across the Volta Lake to Kpando to ostensibly continue the journey to Nigeria.

According to the Public Relations Officer of the Eastern Regional Police Command, DSP Ebenezer Tetteh the victim while being transported on the motorbike was crying and that raised Police suspicion.

When the suspect was questioned he claimed he was sending the victim to her grandmother at Nigeria but she quickly denied the claim and told the Police she was being sent to Nigeria into forced marriage.

Mother of the Victim, Mariama Abubakar, when invited to the Police station corroborated the statement of her daughter.

The suspect is currently behind bars assisting in further investigation led by Detective Inspector Daniel Apedo, the CID in charge of the case.

Ghana is ranked 61 in the world on Child Marriage as 5 percent of girls are married by age 15 and 21 per cent by age 18.

A 2015 report by UNICEF stated that one in four women in Ghana married before the age of 18, representing 27 per cent of the population. According to Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2011 the menace is high in Upper East, Western, and Upper West Regions.

However, generally, Child Marriage is more common in the rural (36.2%) areas than urban (19.4%).

Globally, 22 million girls are already married. While another 280 million at risk of becoming brides before they turn 18.

The total number of women married in childhood is 700 million. Every year, an additional 15 million girls under age 18 are married.