The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has called for a high level investigation by the United Nations over the death of 26 young girls reported to be Nigerians while crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.
The Director-General of NAPTIP, Dame Julie Okah-Donli, who described the deaths as sad and unfortunate, lamented that the deaths should not be ignored but thoroughly probed.
The 26 girls were among the 375 migrants said to be aboard a Spanish Warship, Cantabria, which docked at the port in the southern Italian city of Salerno.
In a release yesterday signed by the agency’s spokesperson, Mr Josiah Emerole, Julie Okah Donli said, “we need to know the identities of the owners of the rickety boats that carry people along that axis as well as their owners, so that they could be prosecuted appropriately.”
She promised that the agency will engage with the Italian authorities with a view to knowing the Nigerians involved in trafficking people through the dangerous route to apply the laws against them.
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