NIGERIA?S President Olusegun Obasanjo has opened the first pan-African conference on human trafficking with an attack on what he called an ?evil new slave trade that threatens Africa?s women and children?.
Most of the victims of the worldwide scourge of human trafficking are Africans and the continent must take an initiative against it, Obasanjo told the five-day conference here.
An estimated half a million African women and children are “exported” annually, although figures are hard to verify.
“The problem, the scourge is … akin to slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. The fight against it will take the same form of doggedness as the fight against the slave trade,” he added.
The conference is being attended by officials from more than two dozen African countries along with non-governmental organisations and representatives of UN agencies, the Organisation of African Unity, and western diplomats.
The UN children’s organisation, UNICEF, is also participating alongside women’s groups and cultural organisations.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is one of the main theatres of human trafficking with tens of thousands of Nigerians – mainly women and children – sold abroad every year, many into prostitution, according to officials here.
Titi Abubakar, wife of vice president Atiku Abubakar, has taken a lead in Nigeria in fighting human trafficking. The conference, she said, should sensitise the world and “evolve an African initiative against trafficking in persons, especially women and children.”
African wowen and children have been turned into “mere commodities, ordinary chattel, to be priced and sold in open market in the street of Europe, Asia and America,” she said.
In Nigeria, a series of initiatives are already under way, notably in Benin City, Edo State, which is the centre of the country’s trade in prostitutes.
Last year, the new governor of Edo State, Lucky Igbinedion, introduced new legislation toughening punishments for those behind the trade.
And his wife Eki Igbinedion set up an organisation, known as the Idia Renaissance after an ancient Bini queen, aimed at using community networks to dissuade families from allowing their daughters to be trafficked. – AFP