The Federal Government on Wednesday, said activities of human traffickers had become an embarrassment to the country and would do all within its power to stop it.
The Attorney General of Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, stated this at the 22nd National Stakeholders Consultative Forum to mark 2017 World Day against Trafficking in Person in Abuja.
Represented by Dr Francis Oni, an Assistant Director, International and Comparative Law Department in the ministry, Malami said that government would ensure that no stone was left unturned to fight the menace.
According to him, apart from national embarrassment the human trafficking has caused the nation; it had also depleted the population of the country.
Many Nigerians, he said, had died while being trafficked to other countries through illegal routes and some lost their lives in the Mediterranean.
The minister pledged government’s commitment and support to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) to succeed in the fight against human trafficking.
In his remarks, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr Paul Arkwright, commended NAPTIP for the recent increase in momentum in the fight against human trafficking.
Represented by Mr Leuis Evans, an official from the Embassy, Arkwright said that the British Government had been collaborating with Nigeria in the fight against human trafficking.
The envoy stated that Britain was more than ready to support the country to rid of the menace of human trafficking.
Earlier in her remarks, NAPTIP Director-General Julie Okah-Donli, said that the which came into being since inception of the agency in 2004, was as a platform for stock taking among stakeholders.
Okah-Donli stated that since introduction of the forum, the agency had done a lot of work aimed at bringing the issue of human trafficking to national consciousness.
The director-general said that since assuming duty in April this year, she had been pursuing trafficking with unprecedented vigour through organisational and policy re-engineering and awareness creation, both home and abroad. (NAN)