Recently, operatives of the Zone 2 Command of the Nigeria Police Force arrested a syndicate of human traffickers for allegedly luring young girls to Mauritania as commercial sex workers. A statement from the Zonal Public Relations Office of the Command disclosed that the suspects were arrested at their hideout in the Meiran area of Lagos State on March 22. One of the suspects disclosed that the syndicate worked with other accomplices in Mauritania to traffic young ladies as commercial sex workers. We commend the police for the patriotic act.
The Lagos incident is just one out of many cases of trafficking of young and vulnerable girls abroad for commercial purposes. Such incidents occur in other parts of the country. Earlier in the month, the Taraba State Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Development, in collaboration with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), rescued eight trafficked children from Minda Village in Lau Local Government Area of the state. The illegal operation was intercepted in Gembu, Sardauna Local Government Area, following intelligence reports.
According to the Commissioner for Women Affairs and Child Development, Mrs. Mary Sinjen, the children were lured and trafficked to South-eastern Nigeria under false claims that they were orphans. To worsen matters, the victims were sold without the knowledge or consent of their families.
In March, NAPTIP, in collaboration with the Department of State Services (DSS), dismantled an interstate child trafficking gang in Abuja, arrested a female truck driver and six other suspects. The suspects were arrested while trying to sell off a 3-year-old girl stolen from Damaturu, Yobe State. Part of their strategy was transporting the victims across the country using a branded cement truck to evade suspicion and selling them to unknown buyers for as much as N600,000 each. The gang also operated through a network of recruiters and buyers strategically placed across various states.
Within the same period, NAPTIP rescued seven young women after it raided a popular hotel in Zamaru, a few kilometres from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. The girls were being prepared to be trafficked to Baghdad, Iraq, for exploitation, according to the agency. The victims were allegedly lured with promises of well-paying care-giving jobs in Iraq but later discovered they were being trafficked.
Similarly, the Force Headquarters announced that Police operatives attached to the Kaduna State Command arrested three suspects on January 31, 2025. The suspects were apprehended for allegedly trafficking 13 victims to Oyo State in an unmarked vehicle.
There are other instances of security agencies intercepting the traffickers and preventing them from carrying out their nefarious activities. However, some traffickers reportedly succeeded in their transactions undetected. Human trafficking in whatever form is a crime against humanity and remains condemnable. It is among the crimes that smear Nigeria’s image abroad. With the frequency and volume of the exercise, Nigeria has been classified as a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficking.
Trafficked people, particularly women and children, are recruited from within and outside the country’s borders – for involuntary domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, street hawking, domestic servitude, mining, begging among other odd duties. Some are taken to other West and Central African countries, primarily Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, Chad, Benin, Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso, and the Gambia, for the same purposes, while others are transported to North Africa and Europe for prostitution.
To halt the menace, NAPTIP was established in July, 2003, as a national compliance to the international obligation under the Trafficking in Persons Protocol. Part of its briefs is to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, especially women, and children, complementing the United Nations Transnational Organized Crime Convention. Since its inception, the Agency has investigated over ten thousand cases of human trafficking and prosecuted hundreds of offenders. It has secured more than 600 convictions and rescued over 20,000 victims. Nonetheless, the number of Nigerians transacted locally and shipped abroad, is on the rise.
Population boom, illiteracy, poverty, underemployment and insecurity which prompt citizens to seek for better opportunities in other countries, rank among the factors that encourage trafficking. Unbridled quest for wealth, peer influence and poor parenting also account for the illicit transaction. We condemn human trafficking in all ramifications. The risks in human trafficking are many. Some of the victims are exposed to forced labour, child prostitution and other dangerous conditions that cause them untimely death or render them invalid for the rest of their lives.
NAPTIP and other relevant agencies should do more in checking the trend. There is need for adequate enlightenment on the matter, as well as value reorientation to steer the youth from the path of easy wealth. Above all, good governance and responsible leadership remain the panacea to the menace. Let jobs be created and the youth encouraged to go to school.