We ‘ve rescued 13, 000 tracfficked persons – NAPTIP

Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Dame Julie Okah-Donli, has said that no fewer than 13,000 trafficked persons have been rescued by the agency.
Okah-Donli disclosed disclosed this in an interview with newsmen in New York at the premiere of a movie about human trafficking in Nigeria.
The movie, ‘Mrs Adams’, which premiered at the Nigeria House, is coming at a time Nigerians and Africans continue to cross the Mediterranean Sea enroute to Europe, and was produced by Queen Blessing Itua.
“So far, we’ve rescued over 13,000 victims, we’ve prosecuted about 339 traffickers and we’ve rehabilitated about 8,000 victims as well,” she said.
According to her, the prostitution trade, which draws its recruits mainly from human trafficking, is estimated at roughly 150 billion dollars business.
She, however, cautioned Nigerians against referring to trafficked persons as prostitutes, saying they are victims, not criminals adding “a prostitute works for herself and cuts the shots.”
“But somebody who is sexually exploited does not work for herself, she work for someone else; she does not even have the freedom or access to the money.”
She said many victims were scared to talk because most traffickers were known to them – family friends, boyfriends, brothers, fear of reprisals or death because of sworn oath.
“Some of them came back with all sorts of conditions – some treatable, some untreatable, some with hepatitis, HIV, some with full-blown AIDS,” she said, adding many of the victims has psychological problems.
“A lot of them come back mentally sick and so we have to refer them to the mental hospitals because they were traumatised, they’ve been beaten, raped and used.”
Okah-Donli regretted that while NAPTIP tried to arrest the perpetrators, they sometimes connived with some law enforcement officers, who were supposed to protect the victims, and allowed them to escape.
According to her, NAPTIP is making a case to ensure that NAPTIP officials are at the airports and borders to check such abuses.
She said human trafficking involved recruitment, transporting and harbouring of human beings to exploit them sexually, for forced labour or for the purpose of organ harvesting through force, deceit, abduction, or fraud.
She accused destination countries of irregular migrants of corruption at the detention centres, saying that is where people go to buy them for organ harvesting, sexual exploitation and forced labour.
The NAPTIP chief, in an emotion-laden narrative, decried the rampant cases of organ harvesting, whereby people waiting for transplant went to the ‘black markets’ to buy the organs.
“People buy men, women, boys and girls, and use them for sexual purposes or for taking their organs off them and using them for whatever purpose or sell them outrightly.”