By Adedapo Adesanya
The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has started a four-day intensive training for members on counter-trafficking efforts.
The bootcamp was organised for the state task force in collaboration with the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public policies (FIIAPP).
FIIAPP is a Spanish public foundation promoting the Action against Trafficking in Person and Smuggling of Migrants (A-TIPSOM) in Nigeria, a project funded by the European Union (EU).
Declaring the four-day Bootcamp open, NAPTIP Director-General, Mrs Fatima Waziri-Azi, explained that the task force was a strategic instrument that the NAPTIP adopted to harness counter-trafficking efforts at the sub-national level.
Mrs Waziri-Azi said the counter-trafficking initiative is a component of the awareness strategy of the agency, aimed at securing the support of critical stakeholders and partners.
”The bootcamp is to prepare the task force members to learn coding and various antics which the traffickers are using to lure their victims day by day.
”Over the years these traffickers always used online platforms to lure their victims but with the emergence of COVID-19, they switched-over to different methods as the virus brought out digital transformation.
”Traffickers come out with different antics as they have now shifted from online to offline, adding that NAPTIP would also not rest on its oars in fighting the menace.
“We have seen an increase in advertorial, fake scholarships which traffickers now post on the social media handles to lure people.
“For us as the crime of human trafficking evolves, we also have to rise-up to the occasion, late last year, we went into partnership with Facebook and this partnership has given us access to thousands of information on online trafficking, child exploitation and sextortion.
“We now have a growing trend of sextortion where people lure other people to share a nude photo of themselves, and use this to blackmail their victims, that is one area we are working on,” she said.
The director-general said the agency entered into a partnership with Facebook .
”Very soon NAPTIP will launch the Alert which will be the second in Africa, it is just a way to have a good report of buying and selling of children.
“The initiative is to enhance rapid response, investigation and prosecution, with this, NAPTIP will receive alerts when a child is reported adopted, the alert will then be shared on Facebook within the vicinity where the child was last seen,” she said.
