NAPTIP decries trafficking of Nigerian girls in Mali

… calls on ECOWAS Parliament to tackle menace

The National Agency for the Prohibition and Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has lamented the trafficking of thousands of Nigerian girls in Mali for forced prostitution, even as it calls on the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to immediately tackle the scourge.

Director-general of NAPTIP, Juli Okah-donli, made this call while presenting a report of the fact-finding mission to Mali on the upsurge of human trafficking in Africa to the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja on Monday.

Okah-donli said over 2000 girls from Nigeria, forced into prostitution in Mali, were deceived on the guise of going there to get better job opportunities in the West African country only to be trafficked

by unscrupulous people.

The NAPTIP directorgeneral, who presented the report during plenary, stated that some of the girls were kidnapped in their school uniforms and forced into prostitution, stressing that the girls were going through harrowing experiences.

Okah-donli pointed out that Nigerian girls were trafficked mainly to the mining areas in the South and Central parts of Mali, adding that a greater number of the victims were trafficked to rebel-held areas in the North, where they became radicalised.

She urged ECOWAS member states to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Nigeria to help them embark on sensitisation campaigns and repatriation of the Nigerian girls, not only from Mali but also from other member states.