The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and other Related Matters (NAPTIP) has said about one million persons, most of them women and children, are trafficked in Nigeria annually.
NAPTIP’s Acting Director General, Alhaji Abdulrazak Dangiri, disclosed this in Keffi, Nasarawa State, yesterday at the opening ceremony of a workshop on the Infusion of Trafficking in Persons (TIP) issues into the curricula of primary and secondary schools in Nigeria.
Alhaji Dangiri said 75 per cent of those trafficked were trafficked across the states, 23 per cent within states while two per cent were trafficked outside the country.
He said though trafficking in persons had become a common feature in all the states in Nigeria, it was more pronounced in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Edo, Delta, Benue, Ebonyi, Imo, Abia and Akwa-Ibom states.
Other states where the crime is pronounced, according to him are Cross River, Rivers, Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Jigawa, Borno, Kwara, Taraba, Niger, Yobe and Kebbi.
Meanwhile, the agency yesterday said women from Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, China and Philippines are being trafficked to Nigeria to work as prostitutes in adult clubs.
NAPTIP’s head of public relations and enlightenment, Mr Josiah Emerole, who revealed this in his presentation at the workshop, said some international syndicates were behind the crime and the agency would soon get them.
