The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has disclosed that many civil society organisations now serve as conduits for human trafficking in insecure areas.

The Head of Press and Public Relations at NAPTIP, Vincent Adekoye, made this disclosure while fielding questions during a joint press briefing of security spokespersons in Abuja.

He said human traffickers have shifted their target gender to young males.

Adekoye revealed plans to profile CSOs, including faith-based NGOs, that target vulnerable communities ravaged by the farmer-herder crisis.

“So we want to alert Nigerians to this gender shift in human trafficking and its technology-driven, cyber-enabled nature,” he said.

“And again, through our operations, we discovered that traffickers are now masquerading under the umbrella of Civil Society Organisations and moving to distressed communities, where you have farmer-herder crises, and promising parents that they will take their children back to school under a fake back-to-school project. And from there, they harvest children.

“And just about two weeks ago, in an operation we carried out in Onitsha, Anambra State, we recovered four children who were moved and trafficked from Kajuru in Kaduna in 2023.”

He said the agency recovered some of them inside a high-rise building, and one of those children was also recovered from a nurse at a Federal Medical Centre in Onitsha.

“We want to profile the Civil Society Organisations in Nigeria. My Director General has asked me to convey to the leadership of the CSOs in Nigeria that they should do an in-house cleansing. Because these are people who are known to the community. Some of them are community-based organisations, faith-based organisations, and non-governmental organisations.

“So, the people are familiar to them, so they take advantage of the vulnerability of the community—those who have been ravaged already—and they walk to them and take the children away.

“As at last count, we have recovered 180 of such children from those that were trafficked from Nasarawa and from Benue, and three other states within the North Central. So, we are appealing to Nigerians to be watchful. When you see them, please contact NAPTIP.”

Adekoye warned that human traffickers have now moved to cyberspace (social media), recruiting victims to Asian countries for hard labour.

He revealed that the agency recently rescued 16 young boys from Thailand who were lured with lucrative job offers.

“Now we have other countries around the Asian corridor, and what is the promise? The promise is that they will earn a good living. And for those of them who have been without a job for a while, it’s a stolen opportunity. Some of them even testify that they got the job.”

“From the beginning, it looks so real to them that they have no reason to doubt. The agency has recently been inundated with calls from some of them who are stranded. Just in July, we rescued about 16 of them from Thailand.”

He said most of the survivors had a narrow escape from death. (The Nation)