Delta State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Ekemejero Owhovoriole, says the efforts of NAPTIP in fighting human trafficking and its proposed intervention in schools in the state are commendable and a step in the right direction.
Ohwovoriole, who is also the chairman Delta State Task Force on Human Trafficking, stated this in Asaba when a delegation of NAPTIP and ICMPD led by Mr. Josiah Emerole paid him an advocacy visit on the Schools Anti-human Trafficking Education Advocacy Project (STEAP).
He said the choice of these organisations to implement the project in 50 selected schools in Delta State will impact on the children, positively.
While stating that the female gender was more vulnerable to human trafficking, Ohwovoriole stressed the need to catch them young and inculcate in them the things they should know about the deception human traffickers use as bait to catch their victims.
Ohwovoriole stated that children must protect their dignity and resist any attempt to de-humanise them by anybody as they grow up.
He opined that the organisation was effectively carrying out their statutory duties both in theory and in practice and pledged the state government’s support to the actualisation of the STEAP Project implementation in the state.
Also, the state Commissioner for Secondary Education, Mrs. Rose Ezewu, represented by a Deputy Director of the ministry, Mrs. Justina Ishaka pledged the ministry’s support for the actualisation of the project and informed the team that the ministry had school-based management committees in schools across the state that will be handy for the project.
Ezewu said that human trafficking is a grievous crime against the vulnerability of children, adding that the menace of human trafficking is against human dignity.
She assured NAPTIP that the ministry will cooperate with them, stressing that human trafficking should not be allowed to thrive in the state.
In his remarks, leader of the delegation, Mr. Josiah Emerole who is the head of Intelligence, Research and Programmes Unit, who represented the Director-General, NAPTIP, Professor Fatima Waziri-Azi explained that the STEAP is a four-year project to be implemented in five project states of which Delta State is one.
He further said that the project will cover 50 secondary schools in each of the selected states pointing out that the purpose of the visit was to adopt the selected schools for the project and validate the Baseline Assessment Report (BAR) that was carried out in selected secondary schools in the state ahead of the state launch of the project, with the state’s Task Force on Human Trafficking as drivers of the project in the state.
Speaking further, the ICMPD representative, Mrs Rhoda Dia-Johnson said the project will entail not only sensitisation in the selected schools but also lead to the inauguration of anti-human trafficking vanguards and the execution of identified minor projects in schools.
She added that project will also sensitise and strengthen the school-based management committees in the schools and also impact the immediate communities where the schools are located.
The STEAP is funded by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), in collaboration with NAPTIP.
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