Many Nigerians are being trafficked to Saudi Arabia under the guise of going on holy pilgrimage to Mecca, Nigerian lawmakers have been told. Executive secretary of The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), Mrs Beatrice Jedy-Agba, in a meeting with the House of Representative Committee on Diaspora appealed to the lawmakers to put in place legislation to check the trend.
Also, about 50,000 girls, aged between 9 and 17, have been trafficked for sexual exploitation in brothels within Nigeria. Mrs Agba told the lawmakers that Nigeria remains a source, transit and destination country for women and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking.
Many Nigerian women and children according to her, are trafficked to African and European countries annually. At least sixty per cent of the prostitutes in Turin in Italy and Antwerp in Belgium for instance, are known to be Nigerian women and girls, the agency told lawmakers.
"The magnitude of this phenomenon and its consequences are considerable and call for concerted action by government and civil society," said NAPTIP Executive Secretary, Beatrice Jedy-Agba.
Chairperson of the committee, Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa assured her that the National Assembly will take urgent steps to domesticate international immigration policies to reduce to the barest minimum, the menace of human trafficking in Nigeria.
She said disrupting and unmasking those responsible for the cycle, will be the motivation that will drive the process.
"NAPTIP's problem is not money, it is law," she said. "We need migration policy. We need to review NAPTIP laws to strengthen it. We need to domesticate trafficking laws. We need to unmask the cabal and break its ring." Rep Abike Dabiri-Erewa (ACN, Lagos), who chairs the committee, promised that the National Assembly will look into the possibilities of amending the constitution to ease the process of domesticating international protocol on human trafficking.
| 
