As part of activities lined up to rejoice with the Nigerian children and youth on this year’s Children and Youth’s Day, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has tasked the National Agency Against Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) to stop government officials from using their protocol officers to mobilise young girls in institutions of higher learning as commercial sex workers.

HURIWA wants a national data/register of pimps and rapists established to name, shame, prosecute and jail offenders for exposing youngsters to risks associated with trafficking for sexual commercialisation.

Also, the Rights group urged the new management team at NAPTIP to take steps to check the upsurge in human organ trafficking coordinated by phoney/fake international job placement agencies with the connivance of human trafficking barons based in Nigeria.

The Rights group listed Malaysia, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates and Lebanon as destination points whereby youngsters lured from Nigeria in the guise of placing them on juicy foreign jobs in those jurisdictions are killed after their vital body organs would have been stolen.

HURIWA charged NAPTIP led by Ms. Julie Okah-Donli, a lawyer to liaise with the relevant committees of the National Assembly on Diaspora affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nigerian Immigration Services to track down these organ trafficking rings and deal with them decisively in accordance with the laws on murder.

In a media statement to mark the 2017 Children and Youth’s Day, and jointly endorsed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA disclosed that it made this presentation during a consultative dialogue on Thursday with the Director General of NAPTIP and her entire Management team in Abuja.

HURIWA said: “We have constructively tasked the new hierarchy at NAPTIP to go after the real human trafficking barons based in Nigeria and to carry out vigorous advocacy campaigns to get the enable law of NAPTIP amended to spell out punitive measures such as life imprisonment for these sets of human trafficking kingpins.

“We note with trepidation and shock the growing involvement of government funded protocol departments in different ministries both at the national and sub-national levels who lure undergraduate youth away from their hostels to be used as commercial sex workers to entertain Ministers, legislators, governors and other high profile Presidency officials for the duration of any official assignments in any given place using public resources to destroy the human dignity of our young girls and boys at the altar of satisfying their political paymasters. NAPTIP should partner with National Universities Commission, the commission for Colleges of Education and Polytechnics, the Ministry of Education and the Independent Corrupt practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) to go after these wayward protocol officers of government at all levels.

“NAPTIP must stop this trend even as we want the agency to hunt for human organ trafficking kingpins based in Nigeria and abroad who have killed hundreds of Nigerian youth after deceiving them with job vacancies in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other far distant places. This is a disturbing trend.”

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