17th December, 2018
Mrs Chigbo Uche, Chairperson, PHEW Foundation International, on Monday called for collective action to end human trafficking in Nigeria.
Uche made the call in Warri at the presentation of a film organised by the Foundation to educate people on the dangers inherent in illegal migration.
Uche told newsmen that the fight to end human trafficking should involve individuals, corporate organisations and all levels of government.
She urged the Federal Government to create the right policies and enabling business environment that would generate employment for the nation’s teeming unemployed youths and dissuade illegal migration.
“To end human trafficking, all hands must be on deck; individuals, corporate organisations and the government.
“Government should put the right policies in place that will galvanise employment for the youth. By so doing, they will not be frustrated and think of travelling abroad through illegal means to seek for greener pastures.
“Also, parents should not encourage their children to travel abroad through the desert because it is a suicide mission.
“Corporate organisation should be more humanitarian in their dealings, give back to host communities by way of empowerment,” the Foundation’s chairperson said.
Uche said the NGO, founded in 2018, was collaborating with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the federal government to stem, what she described as “modern day slavery,” through aggressive awareness and advocacy.
“We are making impact, recently, IOM returned some persons to us from Libya.
“One of them is a 13-year-old girl. She was 11 years when she travelled with the consent of her parents, the little girl passed through harrowing experience which could have destroyed her life.
“Another girl travelled to Libya without even telling her parents. So ending trafficking is not going to be immediate, it is a collective and gradual process,” Uche said.
The chairperson said that the NGO was in the process of floating a skill acquisition centre to train and empower the unemployed to become productive.
One of the viewers at the film show, Mr Isaac Asowata, a commercial motorcyclist, said that the film had dissuaded him of the desire to travel abroad through illegal means in search of greener pasture.
“Sho, I’m okay with the Okada wey i dey ride o,” Asowata said in local parlance.