NO fewer than 15 girls of Nigerian descent were recently rescued and brought back to their fatherland from Mali where they were being coerced to work as commercial sex workers or call girls. The rescue operation and eventual return of the girls to Nigeria was facilitated by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) in collaboration with two of its development partners, namely Network Against Child Trafficking, Abuse and Labour (NACTAL) and Action Against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants in Nigeria (A-TIPSOM). All of the 15 girls were victims of human/sex trafficking, an illegal and immoral but lucrative business being promoted by some unscrupulous Nigerian ladies who hoodwink naive and oftentimes unsuspecting young girls into a life of sex slavery under the guise of getting them honourable employment outside the shores of the country.

Certainly, the 15 girls, two of them reportedly pregnant and another with a three-year-old boy, were not the only ones who were frustrated and dissatisfied with their unusual situation: they were those who managed to escape from their traffickers and taken into the custody of the Mali chapter of the West Africa Coalition Against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants (WACTISOM). As a matter of fact, it was WACTISOM in Mali that apprised NACTAL of the presence of the girls in its custody, and NACTAL in turn contacted NAPTIP. NACTAL is reportedly instrumental to the establishment of WACTISOM in the 16 West African countries.

The cooperation between governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) against trafficking in persons in Nigeria and across West African states appears to be quite impressive. But one would have expected this robust meshwork of anti-human trafficking collaboration to have birthed a more sterling outcome in terms of significantly reining in the spate of human trafficking in the region and particularly in the country. Yet, across Africa and Europe, the number of Nigerians, especially girls, trafficked to foreign lands to engage in illegal and morally reprehensible acts is still humongous. The representative of the Director-General of NAPTIP and head of the Intelligent and International Corporation Unit of the agency, Angela Agbayekhai, acknowledged this much while briefing the press about the rescued girls. She said: “Today, we have 15 of them with a child of three years, a male child. A fact-finding team which went to Mali in 2017 estimated that there are about 20,000 Nigerians still trafficked there. The ones brought back today are a drop in the ocean.”

If the outcome of local and regional initiatives against human trafficking is so minuscule that it almost amounts to nothing, like NAPTIP unwittingly admitted, then there is an urgent need to tweak the strategies designed to curtail the menace of human trafficking. For instance, based on the official narrative about how the 15 girls were rescued, if they had not escaped from their traffickers or had been unable to run away from their captors, WACTISOM would have had nothing to report to NACTAL and NAPTIP. While we commend NAPTIP for its laudable efforts that resulted in bringing the girls back home, we urge more aggression in the implementation of strategies against trafficking in persons, such that the victims, especially the girls being prostituted, can be fished out wherever they are and liberated from their captors. They should not stand a chance to be saved only when they express the desire to, or take obviously risky steps to break free of their oppressors and return home. NAPTIP is urged to leverage the presence and willingness of local and regional Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to cooperate/ collaborate with it and adopt a more proactive and intelligence-based approach such as bungling the travel plans of the slave merchants and the girls before they leave Nigeria. Again, tackling the menace of sex slavery by hunting down the baronesses and enablers of sex slavery who latch onto the naivety and misery of some of the girls to lure them into prostitution will help. They are the ones orchestrating the anguish and debasement of innocent girls for pecuniary gain, and therefore should be identified, investigated, prosecuted and punished if found guilty.

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