Trafficking of women, especially young girls and women into exploitative sexual and commercial labour recently began to attract local, national and international attention globally due to the fact that trafficking of women has a number of far-reaching socio-economic, health and political consequences on the society at large. And while it is a global challenge, the problem seems to be escalating in Nigeria more than other West African countries.
Available statistics indicate that out of about 500,000 women taken into the United States and Europe yearly for sexual and domestic servitude, there are over 70,000 African victims of women trafficking and Nigerian women account for 70 per cent of those trafficked to Italy alone due to porous borders, poverty, refusal of victims to expose traffickers, delay in prosecuting apprehended culprits, belief in greener pastures and biting youth unemployment among various other issues.
According to Women’s Consortium of Nigeria, in Nigeria, women and children, especially the girl-children, are victims of trafficking for various forms of labour including prostitution and sexual exploitation and studies shown that in Nigeria children form the largest victims of trafficking both internally and externally.
The consortium states that Nigeria constitutes a recruitment, transit and destination centre for external trafficking of women and children, from where victims are trafficked mostly by sea to Gabon, Cameroon and Guinea to work on farm plantations, adding that children are also recruited from Shaki in Oyo State and trafficked to Guinea, Mali and Cote Ivoire to work as hawkers and domestic servants.
Nigerian children are also trafficked to European countries and the Middle East for prostitution and sexual exploitation. The trend for the trafficking of Nigerians to European countries, especially Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and more recently England started manifesting in the 80s but reached alarming proportions towards the mid and latter part of the 90s up until now.
In the absence of specific data, few studies have shown that thousands of Nigerian women and children have been trafficked to Europe and most of the trafficked victims for prostitution are children at the time of travel. The usual bait for luring Nigerian girls into trafficking for prostitution is the false promise of employment to earn the much valued foreign exchange, vocational training or marriage
However, contrary to earlier data that recruitment of girls for trafficking en route to Europe are predominantly from Edo and Delta states, agencies that deal with rescuing victims of trafficking have stated that the South Western part of Nigeria is the new gold for traffickers.
Meanwhile, the US Department of State (USDOS) in its country report on trafficking in persons published in June 2017 notes that “Nigerian sex traffickers operate in highly organised criminal webs throughout Europe and many sex trafficking victims begin to work for their traffickers in exchange for leaving sex trafficking themselves. In its 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report, the department said the Government of Nigeria does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so.
And due to this challenge, various bodies’ especially religious institutions like the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) which is known as the spiritual pulse of the African Continent and the Institute of Church and Society, have stepped in to fill the vacuum, and help in rescuing victims, sensitising the public and creating a platform to curb if not eradicate, irregular migration and trafficking.
One of the efforts of the efforts is the 2021 AACC Step-down training on irregular migration and human trafficking in South West Nigeria that took place at the Institute of Church and Society in Ibadan last week with various sectors in the society represented, in a bid to chart new course to fight escalating cases of irregular migration and human trafficking in South West Nigeria.
While speaking on the topic, understanding the phenomena of human trafficking and irregular migration and its challenges, the director of the Institute of Church and Society, Very Rev. O. Kolade Fadahunsi, said that apart from migration happening within the African continent, there are major transit routes of migrants through Libya going to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea and as well as through the Horn of Africa targeting the Middle East.
He added that there is a growing trend of Africans either voluntarily migrating or trafficked which is undocumented and identified political instability, poor governance system and gross unemployment as factors propelling young people across Africa to embark on irregular migration.
According to him, AACC is advocating on irregular migration because Africa and African issues are inadequately represented and there had been no deliberate effort towards changing this, adding that the overall objective of the program was to create a platform to identify the root causes of migration, available frameworks and tools for advocacy and other responses on the national, sub regional and continental level in order to come up with a common position on the current migration crisis, which will feed into policy recommendations for Africa Union- Policy makers and actions for policy implementers.
Speaking on the underlying causes of irregular migration and human trafficking, Rev. Angele Wilson-Dogbe, AACC Regional Coordinator for West and Central Africa and the officer in charge of migration, identified poverty, economic vulnerability, lack of human rights for vulnerable groups, lack of legal avenues for migration and bad governance as the primary contributors to trafficking in persons, adding that it is obvious that both irregular migration and human trafficking are interconnected as one leads to the other and results in sexual exploitation, labour exploitation and organs extraction
She added that for effective and sustainable actions that lead to ending irregular migration and human trafficking, there is need for countries to achieve an inclusive and sustainable development that leaves no one behind
Explaining the reason attention is now focused on the South West, Revd. Jacob Adeniji, who operates as the House Parents of Lydia House, a Baptist Mission to rescue victims of trafficking in Burkina Faso alongside his wife, Rachael, stated that thousands of victims of trafficking are trapped in sex shops in the gold fields of Burkina Faso and countries surrounding Burkina Faso.
According to him, trafficking was shifted from Edo state to Yoruba states in Nigeria when the Oba of Benin arose to combat trafficking in Edo land by gathering all traditional priests to annul all oaths sworn by trafficked people with their traffickers, adding that “the Oba of Benin also placed a curse on anyone who trafficked women, children and men from Edo land for prostitution within and outside Nigeria. The effect is a great reduction of trafficking from Edo state and an increase in trafficking from the Yoruba states. A Lebanon study shows that 80 per cent of trafficked young women from Nigeria to Lebanon are Yorubas,” he said.
Lydia House called for a law against the buyers of sex in all the countries of the world and public awareness in schools, churches and meeting places in villages, towns and cities in south western states to make the Yorubas aware that the battle is now at their gates and is exploring employing survivors of trafficking to Speak-Out in Rallies Against Trafficking and prostitution.
Very Rev’d. Dr. Segun O Babalola of the Chaplain of the All Souls Chapel, OAU, on his paper, Mental health, psychological wellbeing and understanding psycho-socio support said there is a nexus between mental health and psychological wellbeing and psycho-social programmes facilitate rebuilding local social structures which may have been destroyed or weakened during the emergency.
He reiterated that partnership with religious groups to provide psychosocial support is important because their moral influence and extensive networks give them access to the most disenfranchised and deprived groups that international organisations and governments are sometimes less able to reach effectively and they help to replace stigma and discrimination with acceptance, love and commitment.
At the end of the training, participants agreed on creating a unified platform that will work collectively on the issue of irregular migration and human trafficking. Also, there was an agreed holistic approach in addressing trafficking which involves 4Rs; rescue, rehabilitation, repatriation and reintegration.
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