AGA Africa Trains Nigeria’s Anti-Human Trafficking Fighters
Igbawase Ukumba in Lafia
The Attorney General Alliance – Africa (AGA Africa), in collaboration with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), on Monday, began a five-day training of Investigators and Prosecutors, to strengthen the anti-human trafficking efforts of the NAPTIP.
Fielding questions of journalists in Keffi, venue of the five-day training workshop, International Advisor of AGA Africa Programme, John Edozie, said AGA Africa works with various countries and stakeholders on transborder crimes. He stated that human trafficking was one of those crimes; hence, adding that AGA Africa had done trainings with NAPTIP in the past, and that the ongoing training was a continuation of the collaboration.
“What we are doing, is to work closely with organisations like NAPTIP on human trafficking. Essentially, we try to deal with the three Ps: We pick the victims, prosecute the criminals, and prevent human trafficking.
“We do this not only with NAPTIP alone, and not just in Nigeria alone. We do work in Kenya, South Africa, Zambia and Ghana. AGA Africa deals with transborder crimes. Human trafficking is one of those crimes. We provide experts. These are Prosecutors, Police Officers, and Judges from places like America, Europe”, he said.
In addition, Edozie stated that AGA Africa also provides Judges, ex-Police Officers, Prosecutors from other African countries who would come to Nigeria and give international perspective to a regional perspective.
He continued: “We also work with Nigerian Prosecutors and people from NAPTIP and other former Prosecutors about this issue to build capacity with organisations like NAPTIP, to help the Prosecutors learn more about challenge of human trafficking, and put them in a place where they can actually prosecute people who are involved in these things and make it deterrent.
On her part, the Director General of NAPTIP, Prof. Fatima Waziri-Azi, revealed that NAPTIP had last year done a gap analysis, and one of the outcomes was the need to strengthen its investigation and prosecution departments.
The NAPTIP DG therefore, said one of the outcomes of the training was to see a cohesive and collaborative investigation and prosecution departments, that would ensure that perpetrators were kept behind bars.
She said: “We are hoping to have more convictions, which will also translate into sending a strong message across the country. When you have a strengthened investigation department, when you have a strengthened prosecution department, that is the only output that you get.
“In addition to the prosecutorial target of the agency, we also do a lot of awareness creation. Our awareness creation, focuses on rural areas and urban communities. Since last year, we have being establishing Trafficking of Persons and Violence Against Persons Vanguard in secondary schools”.
She however, discovered that the Agency has been able to do that in 84, out of the 110 Federal Government’s Unity Schools across Nigeria.
Waziri-Azi added that having secured approvals from the Service Chiefs last year, the agency was also expanding the Trafficking and Violence Against Persons Vanguard in military secondary schools.
In one of the community engagements NAPTIP did last year, the Director General of the Agency said it was a collaborative between the Oba of Benin’s Palace where the agency set up the Oba of Benin Task Force on Trafficking of Persons.
“We identified three endemic Local Government Areas in Edo State and four communities, where we went on round sensitisation. In terms of online exploitation, we have seen a drastic shift from offline exploitation to online exploitation. We noticed this shift during the Covid-19 period.
“In terms of stemming this tide online, we have established a cyber security response team for NAPTIP. This response team is responsible for handling all cases of online sexual exploitation, child sexual and material assault.”
For the Country Coordinator of the AGA Africa, Ebelechukwu Enedah, the five-day workshop was all about capacity building of Prosecutors and Investigators of human trafficking. According to her, “the people that are here, are the people that actually investigate this crime and then the people that take it to court”.
She however, wanted NAPTIP to start involving the public in its fight against human trafficking, because according, to her “There is so much agencies can do; the churches, the schools, the parents. They actually need to take the fight back to the general public”.
Enedah maintained that if those agencies were not involved, there was so much the Government could do.
“But if the public and the communities are involved in this fight, you will see that it will be more of a collaboration. However, if the awareness is not there about the ills of what actually constitutes trafficking, people will not know. They will still go ahead”, the AGA Africa Country Coordinator concluded.
