Eight of the 16 children taken from a Christian orphanage in Nigeria in 2019 were released this month after one of them suffered a mental breakdown. The others remain in government custody, with a court-mandated deadline for their return still unmet.
The children had been seized during police and anti-trafficking raids on Dec. 25 and 31, 2019, targeting the Du Merci orphanages in Kano and Kaduna states.
Twenty-seven children in total were removed from the facilities, and 16 were transferred to the government-run Nasarawa Children’s Home in Kano City, where they remained for over four years.
The release occurred last Wednesday, one day after an older girl left the government orphanage and made her way to the Du Merci office in Kano, sources informed Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Staff at the facility reportedly struggled to respond to her mental health condition, describing erratic behaviour including talking to herself, packing her belongings, and repeatedly demanding to be allowed to return “home.”
Although she was taken back to the government-run facility, officials released her and seven other older children the next day.
All eight children joined their adoptive parents, Du Merci co-founders Professor Solomon Musa Tarfa and his wife, at their home in Plateau State a day later.
The younger eight remain in state custody, with their release pending a review by the Kano State Attorney General of a consent judgment issued by the Kano State High Court. That ruling, which remains in force, had required all 16 children to be returned to the Tarfas no later than March 19, 2025.
Among those still in custody are three children transferred in January 2021 to a remote facility reportedly owned by a former Kano governor. They were allegedly forced to recite Arabic prayers, attend a mosque and study the Quran. Their names were also reportedly changed.
The Tarfas issued a statement thanking their lawyer for securing the partial release, but remain deeply concerned for the children still held in government custody. They have launched a petition calling for the full return of all 16 children.
"While we are relieved by the return of the eight children, we are alarmed that the youngest, who are in the greatest need of parental care and guidance, remain in same government orphanage where conditions precipitated the mental breakdown of their older sibling," CSW CEO Scot Bower said in a statement. "It is deeply disturbing that the Kano State authorities continue to defy the High Court order for their release, and effectively to detain these children arbitrarily. The absence of their elder siblings leaves them incredibly vulnerable."
In 2021, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that the 16 children taken from Du Merci and their adoptive father had been detained without legal justification. It called for their immediate release and recommended compensation and reparations under international law.
Tarfa was arrested in December 2019 and held in pre-trial detention for around a year. In June 2021, Taraf was acquitted of abducting 19 children from their legal guardians. In 2023, he was acquitted of a second charge of forging a certificate of registration for his orphanages, an allegation he denied.
In a separate case, officers from the same anti-trafficking agency in Kano reportedly removed eight children from an orphanage in Asaba, Delta State, while its founder was attending church. The children, said to be Igbo Christians from southeastern Nigeria who did not speak Hausa, were transferred to the Nasarawa Children’s Home in Kano, CSW notes.
Reports claim that they had their names changed and are being made to attend a mosque.
The Asaba orphanage’s founder reported the removal to the Delta State Commissioner of Women Affairs, who sent a letter to the Kano office of the anti-trafficking agency. The agency has denied receiving the communication.
