No fewer than seven persons who were being prepared to be trafficked to Baghdad, Iraq, for exploitation have been rescued by operatives of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
They were rescued during a raid on a popular hotel located at Zamaru, a few kilometers away from the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja.
A statement on Sunday by the press officer of NAPTIP, Vincent Adekoye, also revealed that the raid led to the arrest of the manager of the hotel followed credible intelligence from concerned stakeholders who noticed the unusual movement of some young girls and strange-looking men within the flourishing hotel thereby indicating that the facilities are being used to habour victims of human trafficking.
Adekoye recalled that the agency had in the last few months intercepted no fewer than 60 suspected victims of human trafficking at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja, on their way to some of the volatile and war-torn countries in the Middle East.
He noted that a critical profiling of the rescued victims indicated that six of them were deceived and recruited from Lagos while one is from Delta State.
Adekoye said as it was the case with other rescued victims in the past, the victims were deceived with a promise of a caregiving job in Iraq and are signed off into slavery by two sets of recruiters whose identities are not known to them.
“They told me that I will do a househelp in Baghdad and I will receive good salary every month. I believed them because I think say Baghdad is in another Country. Them no tell me say I dey go work for Iraq”, one of them recalled with tears as she narrated her ordeal in the hands of the recruiter to officials of NAPTIP.
Director General of NAPTIP, Binta Adamu Bello, warned service providers collaborating with traffickers to expect the dull weight of the law.
Represented by the Director, Research and Programme Development, Mr. Josiah Emerole, the Director General said, “It is sad the way some of the service providers in the country aid and abet the recruitment, transportation, transfers, and habouring of Nigerians who are victims of human trafficking.
“The hotel is believed to be a muster point for victims of human trafficking to some of the notorious destination countries. The manage of the hotel is being quizzed and we have also intensified the manhunt for other members of the trafficking gang working in collaboration with other criminal elements in Iraq”.
“The suspected victims are trafficked from different parts of the country and haboured in the hotel. They are further briefed on how to evade arrest at any point by disguising themselves in various forms and answering questions from Law enforcement Officers at the airport.”
The Director General added that: “Due to the unpatriotic roles of some of these service providers, the agency shall henceforth invoke the appropriate section of its law to prosecute them. This is because harbouring suspected victims of human trafficking is also an offense in the Trafficking law.”
