Etim Effiong
National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons has rescued 132 persons who have been trafficked this year out of Akwa Ibom State.
It stated that the establishment of the State Task Forces on Human Trafficking is a component part of the agency’s strategic thrust aimed at expanding its frontiers and enhance robust partnerships in the fight against human trafficking in the country.
Director General of the agency, Dame Julie Okah-Donli, said in Uyo on Thursday that 40 of the victims were rescued from sex exploitation, 28 from baby sellers, 23 from labour exploitation while others were for other sundry exploitation issues.
Okah-Donli, who stated this on the sideline of her visit to inaugurate the state task force on human trafficking, said that those rescued ranged from the ages of five months to 34 years with 40 percent of the victims from the Oron axis of the state because of its strategic trade location as a gateway to the Atlantic.
The NAPTIP DG commended the Nigerian Navy and other security agencies in the state for their continued assistance to the agency in combating human trafficking but insisted that more would be achieved with increased support from the media, religious and traditional institutions.
The Task Force on human trafficking, she explained, is premised on the need to enhance state and non-state multi-sectoral response towards combating human trafficking in Nigeria and is aimed at enhancing comprehensive prevention and coordinated legal and other services for trafficked victims through capacity building , technical assistance and institutional development.
She said, “The overall objective of the task force is the coordination and reactivation of technical inter-agency cooperation meetings with key stakeholders, including donors, development partners, law enforcement agencies, MDAs and NGOs to enhance the capacities of state and non-state actors as well as multi sectoral response towards improving partnerships.
“These partnerships are aimed at the prevention of human trafficking, protection of victims of human trafficking, offer access to justice for victims of trafficking, prosecution of traffickers and to enhance the process of successful restoration of victims of trafficking to the state of physical, psychological, social, vocational and economic wellbeing.”
In a remark, Project Officer, Counter Trafficking and Mixed Migration in the International Organisation for Migration,IOM, Betham Ngurum said the organisation had rescued more than 17,000 Nigerians involved in illegal migration in Libya, Mali and other parts of the world since 2017.
Ngurum said that over 6,771 of them had so far been rehabilitated with 45 of them from Akwa Ibom while there has been requests from different parts of the Middle East for the repatriation of 550 Nigerians.