News

LIKE SERIOUSLY! Witch Doctors Employed In Edo State To Fight Human Trafficking

Published

5 years ago

February 6, 2018

The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, has engaged the services of local witch doctors in Benin, Edo State to curb trafficking in persons.

The state, and in particular its capital city, Benin, is reputed to have the largest cases of human trafficking in Nigeria.

NAPTIP said it has gathered witch doctors in the city and made them ambassadors in fighting the menace.

According to a report by The Punch newspaper, the Director General of NAPTIP, Julie Okah-Donli, disclosed this at a symposium for the agency’s officials in Abuja on Monday.

“When we gathered these witch doctors recently to sensitise them on what human trafficking victims go through in Europe, they were shocked.

“And they have made their commitments to work with us to fight the menace of human trafficking,” the Okah-Donli said.

Edo indigenes, particularly the women, reportedly started migrating to Italy in the early 1990s for greener pastures and majority were engaged in prostitution. It became a thriving business for them and they started creating cartels all over Europe.

The NAPTIP boss said investigations revealed that some local witch doctors were involved or used in the trafficking of persons to Europe.

She said the agency would involve and sensitise more witch doctors in Edo and other parts of the country and make them NAPTIP ambassadors in fighting human trafficking.