All the critical stakeholders could do more to stem the crime.

Over 50 girls, mainly teenagers forced into prostitution, were recently rescued by the Nigerian Navy during a raid on two brothels in Port Harcourt. The under-age girls, recruited from villages, were paraded with three suspected sex traffickers. The raid was carried out in collaboration with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) and the Civil Defence Corps. The concern here is that there are many such brothels across the country while some unfortunate underage Nigerian girls are currently marooned in many of our neighbouring countries as victims of this malaise.

As part of the 2021 World Day against Trafficking in Persons last year, both the International Office for Migration (IOM) and NAPTIP launched some tools for a standardised approach to the identification, referral, and protection of Victims of Trafficking (VoTs). “The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation of vulnerable persons who, due to their worsened economic situation, were recruited for labour or sexual exploitation,” IOM Chief of Mission, Franz Celestin said. “The tools developed are a first step in providing a voice to the victims as it allows them to share their experiences, help service providers facilitate referral pathways and provide comprehensive protections services.”

In recent years, the IOM has spent huge sums of money to evacuate back home hundreds of Nigerians most of whom were trafficked to Libya enroute Europe with promises of better life. Several of them lost their lives while those who survived went through anguish and trauma before the federal government came to their rescue. These were aside the uncountable numbers of Nigerians who regularly lose their lives on the Mediterranean Sea while being trafficked abroad or engaged in illegal migration. There have been stories of trafficked victims compelled to undergo rituals, including eating chicken hearts, and drinking blood containing worms and powdering incisions.

Meanwhile, at the root of human trafficking in Nigeria is endemic poverty which has been a veritable tool in the hands of traffickers to lure their victims into illicit jobs with promises of improved living either in some cities within the country or abroad. This is an affront against humanity and a grave infraction on human rights, often motivated by profit to exploit other people by force, fraud and deception. We challenge government, at all levels, to address the prevalent poverty ravaging the land and offer meaningful hope of livelihood to frustrated young Nigerian men and women who are often victims of trafficking. We also task NAPTIP to live up to its responsibilities by engaging in massive enlightenment campaigns against trafficking particularly in the rural areas of the country where this scourge is now prevalent.

The sheer magnitude and sophistication of this human merchandising indicate that for any meaningful breakthrough to be achieved in the efforts to arrest it, collaborative attempts must be made by governments, non-governmental organisations, corporate bodies and even influential individuals. Critical stakeholders can no longer continue to watch from the sidelines while unscrupulous people classify fellow human beings as commodities and benefit from their ignorance, desperation and, sometimes, greed.

We implore the security agencies to deploy the requisite intelligence that will help in fishing out the perpetrators of this most heinous crime and punish them in accordance with the law to serve as deterrent to others. Chilling statistics suggest that human trafficking has become one of the biggest money-making businesses after drug trafficking today. It is therefore rather shameful that our country is regarded not only as a transit route for this illegal trade but also a source as well as a destination with children and young adults, now becoming merchandise for what has become a cross-border crime.