The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and other related matters (NAPTIP) has forced Nigerian skit makers, Simigo and Ezebueze, to delete a viral video depicting child sexual abuse from the social media.
The two comedians had posted a short video in which Ezebueze acted as a wicked landlord raping his tenant’s toddler.
The video which garnered hundreds of thousands of views however attracted the condemnation of many well-meaning netizens who mounted pressures on the skit makers to remove the offensive video.
Intervening, NAPTIP noted that it was leveraging on its partnership with Meta to escalate and hopefully have the user account suspended.
NAPTIP added that “uploading or sharing child sexual exploitation material is a crime. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
With the pressures and threat from NAPTIP and other notable accounts, the skit makers deleted the video on Monday and publicly tendered an apology through comedian, Ezebueze’s Instagram account on which the offensive video was posted.
“Please we are so sorry to create that kind of skit, please our intention is not to promote child sexual Abuse material (CSAM). Please we are so sorry for the video we promise that it won’t happen again and again,” the skit makers said as they apologised for the video, with the mother of the toddler confirming that skit makers did do anything to the little child.
She added that it was all acting, noting that they used her room for shooting the video.
SaharaReporters earlier reported that In the viral clip, one of the comedians was seen entering his apartment with a two-year-old, who he portrayed as his daughter, and they both greeted another skit maker, playing the role of a landlord, making sexual faces as he sighted the girl.
The girl is then seen exiting her father's apartment in the second scene, and the landlord lured her with a drink and took her to his room.
The father then emerges from his room, noticing that his daughter is missing, and goes outside to meet the landlord, only to discover that his daughter's underwear is outside his landlord's room and the girl can be heard crying.
The video on Facebook has elicited a lot of reactions from Nigerians, who described the video as offensive and demanded that the video be taken down and the two skit makers should be arrested by the police.