Pa Ikhide Unravels That Despicable Human Trafficking Yarn

Trust, but verify

One thing we must never lose regardless of our experiences and how we age is our sense of curiosity, a questioning mind, a precociousness that is adventurous, the boldness to challenge the conventional and the ability to maintain a modicum of healthy scepticism.

This is where I am wont to commend Pa Ikhide (Ikhide R. Ikheloa) who has singlehandedly blown apart the foundation of that human trafficking story supposedly written by Tobore Mit Ovuorie for the Premium Times Nigeria in collusion with ZAM Chronicle in the Netherlands. Much of this discussion has been on Pa Ikhide’s Facebook page.

Blog - Opinion: My Views About That Human Trafficking Exclusive

No one is disputing the truth in the criminality and the atrocity of human trafficking where lives are wasted in petty street thievery, sex trade and organ harvesting, but one should be sure of who has experienced this situation and who is telling the story.

Ghost-writing is no crime

As it has transpired, from Pa Ikhide’s investigations of Tobore Mit Ovuorie and her social media activities, when she was supposedly undercover being trafficked in 2013 and the many questions left unanswered with many of us being carried away on the sentimentality of the narrative to the detriment of the veracity of storyteller, we can very well assume we have been conned.

I do not think Tobore Mit Ovuorie would have been less celebrated if she had ghost-written the gory tales of people who escaped the clutches of those rotten human traffickers, but to have constructed a fantastic thriller of a fictional tale around herself as the main actor in a drama where she was at risk of losing her life is not only dishonest and contemptible, words really do fail me.

Reputations like dung

The supporting cast that appeared to give credence to this travesty are no less beyond repudiation and excoriation. Premium Times with its many award-winning laurels was ready to stake its well-earned reputation on giving this fantasy a veneer of truthfulness by attacking sceptics when it should have addressed the questions, sombrely, honestly and honourably.

ZAM Chronicle with its under-the-railroad offices in Amsterdam has not only been dishonourable, but lent itself to propagating the stereotype of African savagery whilst pretending to be more concerned for the dignity and reputation of Africans in their ambivalence between revelation and concealment – nothing could be more sickening than false empathy.

Thank you, Pa Ikhide

Again, we must thank Pa Ikhide who did not wane or shrink in his tenacity to get to the bottom of this matter, when a majority of us had been taken for a long rocky emotional ride that deprived the real victims of human trafficking of their voice and their story, because some unscrupulous, dishonest, reprehensible, ignominious and detestable journalists and newspapers had an eye for self-serving awards to the exclusion of others.

Shame on all of them and for those whose stories you stole for your selfish ends, you are no better than the human traffickers, their blood is on your heads as it is on the heads of the traffickers. Shame on you.