The Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, Prof. Fatima Waziri-Azi, says the Southeast ranks among the regions with the highest human trafficking infractions in the country.
Waziri-Azi said this on Monday at the opening of a one-day workshop organized in Enugu by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, ICMPD, in partnership with NAPTIP.
He was represented at the event by the Director of Research and Programme Development in the agency, Mr Josiah Emerole.
The NAPTIP boss said the essence of the workshop was to validate the report of the baseline carried out for the advocacy project by NAPTIP and ICMPD.
The ICMPD is an intergovernmental organization with headquarters in Vienna, Austria, with 20 member states.
According to him, the project was carried out in the five states of Enugu, Edo, Delta, Benue and Ogun.
Waziri-Azi said that Enugu was chosen as one of the pilot states because of the high rate of human trafficking in the zone.
He described human trafficking as the second major crime in the world but regretted that “Nigerians see it as a minor crime.”
He encouraged stakeholders to pool resources and collectively fight the menace.
According to him, the fight against human trafficking is a collaborative one because anybody can be trafficked, both young and adult, in the name of making money.
“It is time to say no to sexual exploitation, use of children to make money and organ harvesting because those children are our future hope,” he said.
He urged people to take the campaign to their various communities for effective sensitisation.