THE National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) on Friday urged parents to stop putting undue pressure on their children to prevent them from falling victims to human traffickers.

Mr Nduka Nwanwene, Zonal Commander, NAPTIP, Benin Zone, gave the advice while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of a media workshop on Migration.

The workshop was organised by the International Organisation for Migration.

Nwanwene noted that trafficking had become a serious issue in Nigeria, regretting that some parents allowed their children to be trafficked due to materialism.

According to the official, some children we trafficked to African and European countries where they are made to pay huge sums of money through prostitution and other illegal means to their traffickers.

“My advice to parents is that they should put less pressure on their children. It is not the responsibility of children who are under 18 years to be taking care of their parents.

“It is the responsibility of the parents to do that. They should not put pressure on them now; it has negative implications, ” Nwanwene said.

He said that since 2004, NAPTIP had recorded 364 convictions, with Benin Zone, comprising of Edo and Delta states, accounting for 60 of the convictions.

He said that as at June, 2018, the agency had been able to rescue over 13,000 victims from human traffickers across the globe and had begun empowerment programmes for some of them.

The zonal commander said the recent curse placed on traffickers and their accomplices by the Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II , was encouraging more victims to speak up and testify in court.

Nwanwene promised that NAPTIP would continue to collaborate with local and foreign partners to tackle human trafficking in Nigeria.

He said such efforts yielded the recent conviction of a nurse, Casandra Iyamu, who was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment by a United Kingdom court for trafficking Nigerians to different countries in Europe. (NAN)

– Jul. 20, 2018 @ 19:09 GMT