The importance and need for the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), to establish its presence at Nigeria’s entry ports has been emphasised by its Director-General, Julie Okah-Donli, in a bid to end human trafficking.
The NAPTIP boss who was a guest on Channels Television programme, Hard Copy,said she will continue to push until the agency will be allowed, despite an earlier alleged refusal by authorities who stated that the Ease of Doing Business will not allow their presence at the airport or borders.
“Unfortunately, we are not allowed to be at the airport, I have brought this up severally on the need and importance for NAPTIP to be at the airport and borders, but we were told that the Ease of Doing Business will not allow NAPTIP to be at the airport or borders.
“I will still continue to push until we are allowed to stay at the airport and at the borders; the reason being that, those at the airport and borders don’t have trafficking as their core mandate, so they are definitely going to concentrate on their core mandate. But NAPTIP’s mandate is to stop all types of human trafficking, and so if they have our officials at the airport, we will definitely stop human trafficking.”
Okah-Donli also revealed that based on statistics released by foreign governments, the figures of human trafficking is reducing. She pointed out the recent tricks by traffickers on unsuspecting young boys and girls.
“There is a very big problem, a new trend where religion has been brought into this, we have people who deceive young girls and boys that they want to send them on pilgrimage to either Mecca or Jerusalem and when people hear this, they are excited.
“Then we have these travel agencies, who go into the rural areas again and bring these young girls and tell them that they are going to get jobs as housemaids in the holy land and Saudi Arabia, and they take them there and the rest is history; most of them are trafficked, we get calls every day from girls being trafficked.
“It is important that NAPTIP is stationed at the airport and seaport and borders; if that happens, we will see a drastic drop in the number of girls who are trafficked to the Middle East,” she stressed.
On the area of collaborating with other enforcement agencies and stakeholders, the NAPTIP boss expressed that the level of relationship can be improved on.
“It is extremely important for NAPTIP to have a very good relationship with all the law enforcement agencies and relevant stakeholders because there must be synergy, cooperation and there must be coordination.
“I am not feeling it the way I want to feel it and that is why I am reaching out to the law enforcement agencies because some of them think they are superior, but I tell them that we are working together for the good of Nigeria; we must come together and work closely.
“We are collaborating in the fight against human trafficking with the Immigration service; we are both trying to see what we can do to ensure that we bring it to the barest minimum.”
No comments:
Post a Comment