Rural Pulse: How You can Stop Trafficking of Persons in Nigeria
Migration plays an important role in national development. However, it has been mainly influenced by the quest for a better life and if not properly done, it may result in dang of irregular migration leading to a life of slavery, economic loss and sometimes death.
Like in other parts of the world, migration has become one of the major problems facing Nigeria. The growing number of irregular migrants from Nigeria has been fuelled by a large pool of unemployed youth, poverty and distorted information on labour market conditions. This trend is reinforced by the increasing professionalism of traffickers and bogus travel intermediaries, with scams and promises of passage to greener pastures.
According to a 2014 US Trafficking Report on Nigeria, the present precarious socio-economic situation of Nigeria makes it a fertile ground for both internal and cross border trafficking especially of women and girls such that the country has become notorious as a source, transit and destination country for human trafficking especially of women and children. Irregular migration is therefore a serious problem in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous of over 170 million people and largest economy.
On Rural Pulse this week, we will be sharing with you some important points you need to know about human trafficking.
According to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Person and Other Related matters (NAPTIP) – an organisation established to prevent, sensitize, investigate, arrest, prosecute, protect, empower, counsel, rehabilitate and work with other organisation in the fight against trafficking of persons; it is a crime/offence to:
- Buy and sell human being
- Employ a child to work as a house help or in quarries, mines and other dangerous conditions
- Recruit persons and force them into prostitution
- Lure someone abroad under false pretenses for forced labour
- Hold any person under bondage because of any debt?
To report cases on human trafficking in Nigeria, call the following lines:
Abuja: 07030000203, 08002255627847 (Toll Free to all networks).
Kano: 07080601800
Lagos: 07080601801
Benin: 07080601802
Enugu: 07080601803
Uyo: 07080601804
Sokoto: 07080601805
Maiduguri: 07080601806
Makurdi: 07088698164
For more information on migration in Nigeria, click here
