Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has called on stakeholders to collaborate in the fight against human trafficking and illegal migration.

Mr Osinbajo made the call on Monday in Abuja at the grand finale of the 2022 UN Day Against Human Trafficking.

Represented by 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 President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime had continued to deploy political will to tackle human trafficking.

Mr Osinbajo congratulated NAPTIP for making progress in the fight and commended other stakeholders for supporting the agency.

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

NAPTIP director-general Fatima Waziri-Azi said the agency had commenced a nationwide establishment of trafficking in persons and violence against persons vanguard across the one 110 federal government-owned colleges.

She mentioned that the vanguard would increase students’ capacity to identify and report cases of human trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence in and outside schools.

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

According to her, traffickers are misusing technology to drive their agenda in trafficking young Nigerians.

“Human traffickers now operate online as much as they operate offline. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is the reinforcement of the need for digital channels of communication,” explained the NAPTIP head.

She added, “Human traffickers have also caught on to this digital transformation, there is an obvious shift from physical to virtual recruitment as traffickers have kept pace with technology, becoming proficient at using the internet for their trafficking operations.”

(NAN)