The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has rescued seven young women allegedly being prepared for trafficking to Iraq after a raid on a popular hotel in Zamaru, near the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
NAPTIP’s Chief Press Officer, Vincent Adekoye, disclosed in a statement on Sunday, March 23, that the victims were intercepted before they could be transported to Baghdad for exploitation.
“The girls were being prepared to be trafficked to Baghdad, Iraq, for exploitation,” Adekoye said.
The operation, carried out following a tip-off, also led to the arrest of the hotel manager, who is being interrogated for allegedly harbouring the victims. The hotel had been under surveillance after reports of unusual movements involving young women and unfamiliar men—suspected signs of a trafficking operation.
Preliminary profiling revealed that six of the victims were recruited from Lagos, while one came from Delta State. They had allegedly been deceived with promises of high-paying caregiving jobs in Iraq.
“They told me that I will do a househelp job in Baghdad and I will receive good salary every month,” one of the victims recounted. “I believed them because I think say Baghdad is in another country. Them no tell me say I dey go work for Iraq.”
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This operation adds to NAPTIP’s ongoing crackdown on trafficking rings, with the agency claiming to have intercepted over 60 suspected victims at the Abuja airport in recent months, preventing them from being trafficked to conflict-prone Middle Eastern countries.
NAPTIP’s Director-General, Binta Bello, condemned the involvement of service providers in human trafficking, noting that the hotel served as a hub for traffickers moving victims between Nigeria and the Middle East.
“It is sad the way some service providers aid and abet the recruitment, transportation, transfer, and harbouring of Nigerians who are victims of human trafficking,” Bello said.
“The suspected victims are trafficked from different parts of the country and harboured in the hotel. The victims were being briefed on how to evade arrest and respond to questioning at the airport,” she added.
Bello warned that NAPTIP would invoke the full force of the law to prosecute individuals or businesses complicit in trafficking activities.
“The Manager of the hotel is being quizzed and we have also intensified the manhunt for other members of the trafficking gang working in collaboration with other criminal elements in Iraq,” she stated.
NAPTIP has vowed to continue its crackdown on human trafficking networks operating within and beyond Nigeria.