The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons has warned that human trafficking is a significant and direct threat to national security and public safety by fuelling organised crime.

NAPTIP director-general Binta Adamu-Bello made the remarks in Dutse at the launch of a programme aimed at supporting and empowering women and children from Jigawa who are engaged in street begging across Nigeria.

The programme is being implemented by Hamadan Kasiran Orphan, Vulnerable and Children OVC Foundation, in collaboration with the Children Education Support Initiative in Arewa, championed by Amina Nadami, Jigawa’s first lady.

The initiative aims to provide opportunities and support that help individuals improve their lives and break the cycle of poverty.

”Child beggars are highly vulnerable to human trafficking, as a sizeable number of them are recruited for various forms of exploitation, organ harvesting, or even used in armed conflict,” she said.

Ms Adamu-Bello said NAPTIP, established in 2003, is Nigeria’s only focal agency responsible for fighting the scourge of human trafficking and other related exploitation across the country.

According to her, reports and findings indicate a high prevalence of recruitment into terrorism and armed conflict among the victims of human trafficking who are daily transported from rural to urban areas and across borders for prostitution and hazardous labour.

Ms Adamu-Bello described human trafficking as one of the world’s most serious threats to national security and public safety.

”It fuels public sector corruption, irregular migration, undermines human capital development potentials, causes social breakdown and exclusion, dearth of capable manpower, human degradation, abuse of human rights, spread of diseases, tarnishes national image, and other associated financial crimes,” she said.

She decried that trafficking in persons has re-emerged in recent times as a modern form of slavery.

Ms Adamu-Bello said the recruitment, transportation, within or across borders, purchase, sale, transfer, and harboring of persons, involving the use of deception, coercive or debt bondage for the purpose of placing or holding a person in forced or bonded labor, prostitution, or in slavery like conditions, like begging, is a crime.

“The law recognises this serious violation of children’s rights, and under the trafficking in Persons Prohibition Enforcement and Administration Act, 2015, in Sections 13,15,19, and 20, and prescribes a minimum punishment without an option of fine of not less than seven years imprisonment for offenders,” Ms Adamu-Bello said.

Ms Adamu-Bello said the agency recently rescued 13 female victims in Maiduguri, who were trafficked from Babura town in Jigawa for forced labour and begging.

“NAPTIP Jigawa state command successfully rescued and reunited 221 victims with their families since its establishment in 2023,” she said.

She reiterated the agency’s commitment to working with its partners to identify and support victims, while also addressing the root causes of the menace.

(NAN)