About 20,000 Nigerian girls are trapped into different parts of Mali and they are engaged in forced prostitution. The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) said to be making efforts to rescue all.
Addressing to the media NAPTIP Director-General Julie Okah-Donli said last December the agency had sent a fact-finding mission and discovered the trafficked victims.
Okah-Donli added the mission reported about 20,000 Nigerian girls are trapped in the country and many of them are being taken to Malaysia to work in restaurants, hotels, hairdressing salons and some other jobs.
The NAPTIP boss further said, “Some of the girls there in their school uniforms, meaning that they were kidnapped on their way to or from school.”
The fact-finding mission revealed in the report some of the girls were sold and made to service, mainly miners, and living condition is horrible. The girls are kept in shanties in forest to assure they cannot escape.
Okah-Donli said their Malian counterparts, the International Organization for Migration and Nigerian authorities are working together to rescue the girls.
She said, “Most of the girls are desirous of returning home and we are working with the IOM, the Malian government and the Nigerian Embassy in Mali to see how we can repatriate them.”
Okah-Donli continued that trafficking has lately increased and it is like 500 girls every day. It is not limited to the Edo girls, but trafficking is taking place across the world.
