Trafficking-In-Persons: Developing responsive system against new devices of perpetrators!

Illegitimate ventures in Nigeria have grown to the degree that the expansive wings have begun to assume narratives that are clustering challenges confronting the Country. Of these, have been the growing wings of trafficking in persons. The venture has grown recently to assume disturbing turn. As hunting for traffickers continue to take its phase, human traffickers have equally been restrategising  to hide their escapades using ventures that seem legitimate to perpetrate subterranean illegalities.

In coded format, the use of  cyber technology has become one platform  used by human traffickers as an avenue to further their nefarious activities under its climate of anonymity.  Using cyber technology to not only mobilise and recruit victims, but also arrange for their transportation and logistics, have been a tool traffickers are now exploiting. Other strategies now employed by the perpetrators include hunting, fishing, surrogacy, sports; especially football, and orphanage homes, among others. A global shortage of organs for transplant, has also form another spurring factor for trafficking of persons for transplant.

In June, 2022, the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), had alerted Nigerians on the devices of new trends in human trafficking by owners of orphanages and football agents. The disclosure had trailed the rescue of 75 children, who were trafficked from an orphanage in Abuja, seven years ago.

The agency’s Director, Public Enlightenment, Josiah Emerole, had while presenting a paper on ‘Emerging trends, routes and tricks in human trafficking,’ at a training for journalists in Asaba, Delta State capital,  disclosed that orphanage trafficking involved recruiting children to attract donations from the rich, who visited the homes to celebrate their birthdays. Stating that some orphanage operators sometimes approached vulnerable parents with the pretence to sponsor their children’s education, only to end up either giving the children out for child labour or selling them, he revealed that another new trend was football trafficking, where traffickers posed as football agents to exploit local footballers seeking to be enlisted into football clubs abroad. “Orphanage trafficking is one of the new trends in human trafficking. There was a case that involved somebody who took children in the name of trying to help,but when the parents were looking for the children, they could not be seen anymore. The number of children involved was over 140. So far, in that particular case, we have been able to rescue no fewer than 75 of them from different states, with some of them sold. The case is in court,” he had said.

In his explanation, he had said that before now, the human traffickers were using direct contact, also known as physical contact, but have opted for the new tricks. Emerole had explained that the traffickers often leverage social media to reach the public, especially their target. On hunting tricks, he had revealed the traffickers would continually request for friendship on social media either using nicknames or impostors. Explaining the fishing tricks, Emerole had said traffickers often published mouth-watering job offers to entice unsuspecting job seekers. He had hinted that any couple with children that is still using surrogates could be a suspected case of child trafficking or labour.

“Orphanage trafficking is more rampant with unregistered orphanages and homes, with owners canvassing for poor parents under the disguise of caring for their children. We appeal to all parents to check the legal status of the Orphanage with the relevant local government area before releasing their wards,” he had said.

June 24, 2022, the Director-General, NAPTIP, Dr. Fatima Waziri-Azi, had disclosed that there is more of internal trafficking than external trafficking in Nigeria. Waziri-Azi in Benin at a meeting she held with stakeholders and partners of the agency in Edo, had disclosed that  83 per cent of trafficking in Nigeria happened within states, within communities, across state lines in the Country, while  only 12 per cent accounts for trans-border trafficking.

“Simply because the media spotlight on people in Italy and all that, we think we have more of trans-border trafficking. No! Internal trafficking is happening before our eyes. Domestic servitude is a crisis in Nigeria,  forced labour too. Human trafficking is, therefore, a national crisis. Every state is affected, though each state has its own peculiarity.  Gone are the days when we think human trafficking is offline, it’s now online. So, we have increase in fake jobs advertorials and fake scholarships. These are the modern trends human traffickers use in luring their victims, with Dubai, India and Cyprus the trending destinations,” she had said.

The NAPTIP DG who described human trafficking as a 150-billion-dollar criminal enterprise and the second trans-national organised crime after drug trafficking, had described  human trafficking as an enterprise for professional criminals. She explained that there were two sides to the crime, as there were the professional criminals enterprise who traffick people for the sole purpose of killing them and harvesting their organs. She disclosed that the flip side of human trafficking was recruiters who actively target vulnerable communities to recruit their victims.

With these strategies, the volume of persons been trafficked have assumed disturbing turn, recently. On Sunday, 31 July, 2022 report revealed no fewer than 615 victims of human trafficking were rescued in Katsina State since the beginning of the year 2022. The Katsina Commandant,NAPTIP, Musa Aliyu, who made this known at the State Secretariat Complex during a joint Press Conference held as a part of the activities to mark the ‘World Day Against Trafficking in Persons,’ said NAPTIP rescued the 615 victims in collaboration with security agencies from the Nigeria Immigration Service, the Nigeria Police Force and the Civil Society Organisations (CSO) operating in the State.

Earlier in June, NAPTIP had disclosed that over 20,000 Nigerian youths were trapped in shanties in mining areas in Mali, where they were sexually exploited. The disclosure was made in Asaba, Delta State capital, by NAPTIP’s Director, Public Enlightenment, Josiah Emerole, at a three-day training implemented by the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP) and funded by the European Union. It was decried the inhuman treatment Nigerian youths who were deceived with juicy employments, were going through, even in African countries.

He was quoted,“Nigeria continues to experience high and external migration due to huge population, economic climate, poverty and porous borders. In Mali alone, no fewer than 20,000 young Nigerian men and women are trapped, living in shanties in the mining areas where they are sexually exploited. Many victims are still stranded in a number of West African countries as they cannot move further to Europe and are living in dangerous conditions. Most of these trafficked persons engage in prostitution for a fee equivalent to N150 which would be collected by those who trafficked them there.”

In May, 2022, Director-General NAPTIP, Waziri-Azi, had said the agency had, since its inception in 2003, rescued, sheltered and rehabilitated at least 17,727 victims of human trafficking. At the weekly ministerial briefing organised by the Presidential Communication Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, she had disclosed that females constitute an overwhelming majority of the victims accounting for about 13,026. The NAPTIP boss had lamented that out of 8,005 arrests in the past years, the agency has so far only secured 511 convictions, adding that the low conviction rate, was due to the refusal of victims to cooperate during investigations.

She was quoted, “The agency has so far rescued, sheltered and rehabilitated over 17,727 victims of human trafficking. 4,272 are males while 13,026 are females. Children also form the bulk of that number; amounting to 8,935. NAPTIP has also rescued 15,992 and 1,805 non-Nigerians in the past years. They hail from China, Lebanon, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Central African Republic, Ghana, Benin Republic, Guinea Conakry, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cameroun Chad, Ivory Coast and Mali.”

In Jun 2022, while NAPTIP disclosed that a total of 18,000 victims of human trafficking have been rescued, out of which 13 were sponsored to universities by the agency,  revealing that it had secured at least 516 convictions since it came into existence, it is pertinent to note that both the number of those sponsored and those convicted are minute fraction of the entire volume of the victims and the suspects  respectively.

On the irreconcilable deficits in the number of arrests and number of convicts, the DG NAPTIP had in May said, “One of the challenges we have is victims not wanting to cooperate with us, because the traffickers are most times, family members. You hear stories of sisters trafficking sisters, brothers trafficking brothers, uncles trafficking nieces and nephews; even husbands trafficking their wives and children. International law stipulates that you don’t force victims to cooperate with the system. What you do is encourage them, and for us in NAPTIP, when we come, we debrief them, ‘Okay, tell me the name of your trafficker.’ And they say ‘Oh, I don’t remember.’ The simple fact is that these people are being threatened. Most of them are threatened personally. Some of them, their families have been threatened. And like I said in my presentations, sometimes your trafficker might not force you to take oaths in Nigeria, because they don’t want you to suspect anything. But when you get to the destination country, they make you swear oaths there. So, they have their own foreign shrine, where they’ll make you swear oaths. And for those that don’t operate in the oath realm, they now video you nude and keep threatening you that, ‘if you report, we’ll expose you. She had disclosed that the low conviction rate was also due to the “unavailability of lawyers to take up civil cases on behalf of victims on Pro Bono basis; making it difficult for victims to get compensation from their traffickers.” The NAPTIP DG had explained that lack of cooperation from source or vulnerable communities also stems from beliefs that the traffickers are helpers and should, therefore, be protected from NAPTIP. Working concertedly to address these glitches remains one important subject the Agency must develop firm structures to eliminate.

The Agency in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders must reconfigure their response strategies to clamdown on the menace. The use of technology would remain a key parameter the stakeholders must leverage on. As this year’s theme for the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons is tittled: ‘Use and Abuse of Technology, synchronising technology largely into the response system of clamping down on the illicit venture is pertinent as a strategic measure NAPTIP must embrace concertedly with relevant sister agencies to fight the menace, as the perpetrators keep on devising crafty tools to push forth their illegitimate ventures. Technology has proven its positive impact in combating crime, enhancing prosecution and fast dissemination of news.

More importantly, issues of huge population, worsening economic climate, poverty and porous borders, have been identified as factors spurring the expansive wings of the illegitimate ventures. Addressing the clustering issues around the informing factors are critical subject matters the Government must pay particularly attention to. Unless issues as  the wobbling economic realities and the clustering consequences of poverty and the associated hardship affecting the overblowing population of the Nigerian society are addressed, dealing with the expansion of the menace would be a facade. To discourage the teeming youthful population of the Nigerian populace, such would only require a drastic and positive change in the harsh narratives of the hardship which have been pushing more Nigerians, particularly the young, to the ventures of human trafficking, whether internationally or otherwise, becoming victims of a system which has subjected many to excruciating and depressing conditions.  June, 01, 2022, NAPTIP had expressed concern over the rising cases of child trafficking in the South East. The South-East Zonal Commander, NAPTIP, Mrs Nneka Ajie had told the News Agency of Nigeria in Enugu that child traffickers had devised new means of getting their victims in the zone. She had lamented that in spite of efforts by the agency to arrest the menace, incidences of child trafficking, illegal migration and associated crimes were on the rise in the region. She had decried that child traffickers had found a way to perpetuate the evil act in cohort with either parents, relations of their victims or the victims themselves.

“A lot still needs to be done. Incidences of child trafficking are growing by the day because the root causes have not been addressed. We need to do more as the traffickers have devised new means of getting their victims. We need to intensify the fight at the national, state and community levels,” she had said.

Strengthening the intelligence system of tracking down the networks of trafficking of persons is pertinent. To build such robust system, NAPTIP must work concertedly with sister agencies for an overarching structures of response. More importantly, increasing awareness and enlightenment to get Nigerians acquainted of the dangers of trafficking in persons, the perpetrators, their modus operandi, the instruments of their devices, as they employ and exploit new ways to perpetrate their mischievous escapades, has become a paramount concern.   Since it has been proven that several Nigerians are falling victims of human trafficking due to misinformation and disinformation, sensitisation becomes pertinent.

Young Nigerians must become lively to investigating different offers and be wary on jumping on such promising and juicy offers without double-checking from official sources. Although the harsh conditions of the Country are pronounced and could not be shied away from, it is not enough for youths to walk into danger ventures with more excruciating conditions while seeking greener pastures.