Julie Donli, Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), disclosed that five of the trafficked girls in Lebanon have returned to the country.
In an exclusive interview with The Nation, Donli stated that the rest of them would return to the country in due time. Reacting to the plight of the trafficked girls in Oman, she said: “If there is any case in Oman, they have to make their way to the nearest country. Since there is no Nigerian Embassy in Oman, they have to make their way to the nearest embassy. There is nothing anybody can do about that.
“We have been trying to get approval to station NAPTIP operatives in all the countries where human trafficking is endemic. At least, we can have at least a NAPTIP officer in all the embassies to serve as a liaison between Nigerians there (including victims of trafficking) and the people here.”
The NAPTIP boss stated that her organisation has been working to stem the tide of trafficking of Nigerians within and outside the country. For instance, following the conviction of the Lebanese and Nigerian traffickers connected to recently rescued victims, Omolola Ajayi and Gloria Taye Bright, they have been charged to court and are currently detained in Ilorin.
NAPTIP has also secured the conviction of one Rosemary Amarachi at the Federal High Court, Ilorin, Kwara State. Amarachi pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one-year imprisonment and a fine of N150,000 to be paid to her victims, said Donli.
Challenges of a rescue mission
Omotola Fawunmi of Project Ferry, revealed that so far, the organisation has facilitated the return of 17 girls to the country.
She said, “One of our greatest challenges is getting the relevant authorities to act promptly or respond when we reach out to them. For instance, at the beginning, we usually reach out to NAPTIP. In the case of Lebanon, we reached out to the Nigerian Embassy in Lebanon and also Abike Dabiri, the Chairman Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM). All our efforts at reaching them were not helpful. NAPTIP was for a very long time, between November and January, not responsive. At some point they complained about not having budget approved yet and so they could not work.
“I had to reach out to a contact in UNODC to get a NAPTIP official to respond to us. In fairness, the Office of the Chairman House Committee on Diaspora did reach out and we have continued to communicate via email. We have sent them a partial list of some of the girls in our care and they have done a letter to relevant agencies, a copy of which was sent to us in the course of the week.”
Fawunmi disclosed that two of the ladies in Lebanon received the assistance of NAPTIP to return home a few weeks ago, and are currently at the NAPTIP Shelter. Three more girls have returned to Nigeria at press time, thus increasing the number of returnees from Lebanon to five.
Efforts to get in touch with the Nigerian Embassy in Lebanon proved futile. Consular Zainab, the diplomatic staff handling the case of the Lebanon girls, persistently evaded questions and calls in respect of the trafficked girls. “I will call back,” she promised on two different occasions. She wasn’t picking calls as at press time.
Going forward…
Few days ago, NAPTIP revealed that it received concrete intelligence that around 20,000 Nigerian girls have been forced into prostitution in Mali. Many of the girls are working as sex slaves in hotels and nightclubs after being sold to prostitution rings by human traffickers, according to a fact-finding mission carried out by the agency in collaboration with Malian authorities in December 2019.
Authorities in Ivory Coast also rescued 137 children, of ages six to 17, who were trafficked to the country to work on cocoa plantations or as sex workers in the eastern town of Aboisso. The children are from Nigeria, Ghana, Niger, Benin, and Togo.
There have been attempts to calculate the overall value of the smuggling of migrants;
human trafficking earns profits of roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers, according to the 2014 International Labour Organisation (ILO) report.
Nigeria occupies a central position in West Africa as a country of origin, transit and destination for victims of human trafficking for labour exploitation and forced labour. Victims are shuttled within and outside the country, into Cote D’Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cameroon, Mali, Niger and Europe in a wide range of industries, including domestic work, mining, stone quarrying, manufacturing, plantations and prostitution.
While the Nigerian government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, it is making significant efforts to do so. But the efforts are considered inadequate.
The government is expected to hold complicit officials, including security officials, accountable for trafficking offences.
Adedoyin Okin, a social worker and anti-trafficking campaigner, suggested improved coordination among law enforcement actors, including NAPTIP, the Nigerian Immigration Service, police, and others while supporting independent criminal investigations into alleged trafficking abuses among security officials in the country.
But while such efforts may bear good results in the long run, in the short run, more drastic measures are needed to check the burgeoning trade in humans, or modern slave trade if you like, within and outside the country.
In Abidjan, Nigerian girls are beaten and forced into sexual slavery in brothels administered by vengeful madames. In Beirut, slave masters force Nigerian girls and women to sleep on balconies, like dogs, under staircases and on top of kitchen cabinets.
In Oman, they make them sleep in toilets and advertise them on a website with order numbers and passport numbers. They are eventually sold and purchased like household items or garden implements.
Zainab’s case is instructive; in October 2017, she departed the country, ravishing and bustling with hope for gainful work in “the white man’s country.” But she ended up as a sex slave in Abobo. Two years later, precisely November 2019, she returned, her beauty severely ravaged.
“I am currently being treated for Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs). I have started taking my drugs and I have found work as a hairdresser. My life is picking up. But I cannot go home yet,” she said, with the lustre of a moonlike being truest in eclipse.
She is no longer the punching bag of dangerous vagabonds nor is she the sexual slave of a vengeful madame. But Abobo continually intrudes her peace, like an apparition, whose gruesome pangs flourishes in the ruins of her dreams.-The Nation
