NANFeatures/Vol.11/No.87/2017 (June 7)
Combating human trafficking in Nigeria
By Mustapha Sumaila, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
Observers note that the scourge of human trafficking is no longer news to Nigerians as perpetrators both home and abroad have taken it as a venture to make money.
According to them, in several cases of human trafficking, the traffickers make so much money at the detriment of their victims; the innocent children.
Reports on human trafficking have also shown that most of the victims are forced into prostitution both within and outside the country while some are engaged in child labour without wages.
In view of this, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) said it had come up with a renewed strength and strategies to arrest the situation.
To boost the fight against human trafficking, Mrs Julie Okah-Donli, the Director-General of NAPTIP said President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration promised political will and assistance to that effect.
He said the presidency had helped the agency to sustain public enlightenment, community dialogues and engagements with various groups at the rural areas on how to tackle the menace.
She said in an interview that the agency would mainstream human trafficking to the national curricula of schools in collaboration with National Educational Research and Development Council to ensure that children in schools learn about human trafficking.
She also said 1,755 victims were rescued and rehabilitated in the past two years, bringing the number of victims of human trafficking rescued since inception of the agency on July 14, 2003 to 10,685.
Similarly, Mr Abdulrazak Dangiri, the immediate past Acting Director-General of NAPTIP, said the agency had received 68 victims of human trafficking deported from three countries in March, 2017.
He said these victims and others were handed over to the agency for investigation and reunion with their families.
To strengthen its operations, Okah-Donli appealed to the Federal Government to extend whistle blowing policy to the fight against human trafficking.
She observed that if the policy was successful in the fight against corruption, it would also be successful if deployed to detect and prevent trafficking in persons.
She noted that the agency would put forward a proposal that five per cent of the sales of the assets of traffickers be given to whistle blowers.
Okah-Donli emphasised that the agency would focus more on awareness creation, advocacy, enforcement of law and capacity building to fight human trafficking.
She promised that machinery would be put in place to secure the future of Nigerian youths and the agency would deploy techniques, skills and expertise to curb human trafficking.
“We will tackle traffickers from the point of conceiving ideas to the point of exploitation and we shall equip our operatives to proactively detect human trafficking action from the onset.
“This means if traffickers decide to sail across the ocean, our men shall be ahead of them; if they fly in the air, we shall await their landing and if they decide to go through the death prone routes across the desert, we are there waiting,’’ she said.
However, Okah-Donli observed that the war against human trafficking could not be won if foreign based traffickers were not arrested and prosecuted.
She noted that the activities of such foreign based traffickers had constituted major threat to the fight against human trafficking in the country.
She, therefore, pleaded with the members of the European Union and other international organisations to provide useful intelligence on the operations base and location of the human trafficking “lords.’’
She made the plea in Abuja recently when she received a delegation from the Embassy of Spain in Nigeria led by Mr Raphael Mouib, an official of the embassy.
“The arrest and prosecution of those human traffickers that are based in any of the European countries is very crucial to our latest efforts to end human trafficking in Nigeria.
“We want them to be exposed and made to face the wrath of the law, this is one of the ways of ensuring success of the latest fight against human trafficking,’’ she said.
She said the agency had decided to shut illegal shelters for victims of trafficking owned by unregistered non-governmental organisations as additional method of fighting human trafficking.
Okah-Donli also explained that the agency had received intelligence report that some organisations, unknown to network of civil society organisations and NAPTIP, had sprung up across the country.
“The problem is that we do not know how genuine these organisations are and with this their action, the image of the country and NAPTIP is at stake since we do not know their intentions.
“However, we will investigate the truth or otherwise of the intelligence report we received and if found guilty, such apartments would be shut and their operators would be prosecuted accordingly,’’ she said.
She insisted that tackling menace of human trafficking was a collective task and must be done holistically in a well coordinated manner.
She, nonetheless, said poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, unemployment and gradual erosion of cultural and ethical values must be addressed to make the war against human trafficking effective.(NANFeatures)
**If used, please credit the writer as well as News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)