The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, on Friday stated that it has rescued 152 victims of human trafficking between January and April, 2016 in Lagos state.
The Lagos Zonal Commander, Mr. Joseph Famakin said the agency has successfully sent over 276 Nigerians to prison and in Lagos Zone there are presently 51 cases in the federal and state high courts.
Addressing newsmen in the state, Famakin, who was speaking on the sideline of a five-day training for the agency’s prosecutors and investigators, said; “We are going to do more so that we can reduce the menace of trafficking in Nigeria.
“The training is applied towards the crime- the smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons by giving them examples of how you can be better in conducting investigations and hopefully to strengthen the justice response to these crimes.
“Under the new law, punishments are bench-marked; they are more stringent; there are fines imposed and now, strictly imprisonment with no option of fines to fight human trafficking.
“We have seven cases in the Court of Appeal and two cases in the Supreme Court and the statistics of victims that are rescued and brought to Lagos, in 2014; we had a total of 316 victims rescued.
“In 2015, we had a total of 417 victims and this year, as I speak we already had 152, so, that tells you the extent to which we are carrying out our operations to rescue victims from the clutches of traffickers.
“In order to strengthen our capacity, that is why we are doing training for both investigators and prosecutors and the need for synergy among these two important groups so that they can work together as a team,” the Zonal Commander added.
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