Osinbajo calls for coordinated action by all parties to combat human trafficking

Represented by Mr Adéọlá Ipaye, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Office of the Vice President, stated that it was only by working together that the war against human trafficking could be won.

According to him, human trafficking is a global phenomenon, while encouraging everybody to rekindle their commitment so that the fight against the menace can be won.

He said that President Buhari administration had continue to deploy political will in the fight against human trafficking, saying that the drive would continue in that direction.

Osinbajo congratulated NAPTIP for the progress it had made in the fight and other stakeholders for the support they had given the agency for the feat it had achieved.

He said that policy document would continue to set agenda and reversal of human trafficking in order to ensure safety of Nigeria in the Federal Government standard procedure.

“All organisations offering shelters and homes to trafficked persons must ensure people are not exploited, we will continue to scale our efforts in the areas of protection, prosecution and others.

“We can only win this fight by working together with common vision,” Osinbajo stressed.

Earlier, the Director General of NAPTIP, Dr Fatima Waziri-Azi, said that the agency had recently commenced a nationwide establishment of trafficking in persons and violence against persons vanguard across the one 110 Federal Government Colleges.

She said that the vanguard was intended to increase the capacity of students to identify and report incidents of human trafficking and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, in and outside schools.

She stated that the idea was to raise a generation of young people empowered to advocate against these crimes and promote safe migration as an option rather than irregular migration.

According to her, we can do a lot of prevention work just by opening their eyes to the problem.

Waziri-Azi said that the theme for the 2022 UN Day Against Human Trafficking “Use and Abuse of Technology” which featured debate for and against between Baze University, Abuja and Veritas University, Abuja, was timely.

According to her, traffickers are misusing technology to drive their agenda in trafficking many young Nigerians, saying that, there is need to change the narrative.

“Human traffickers now operate online as much as they operate offline. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is the re-enforcement of the need for digital channel of communication.