THE National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has exposed increasingly sophisticated methods used by traffickers to lure and exploit unsuspecting Nigerians, particularly youths and women.
News Point Nigeria reports that speaking in Abuja at a press conference to mark the start of the 2025 World Day Against Human Trafficking, the Director-General of NAPTIP, Binta Adamu Bello, warned that traffickers are now exploiting digital platforms, fake scholarship offers, online loan schemes, and even baby factories and organ harvesting networks to entrap victims.
“The fight against human trafficking is evolving with disturbing new trends. Every day, traffickers devise new tactics to lure and exploit the vulnerable,” Bello said.
The event, themed “Human Trafficking is Organised Crime – End the Exploitation”, spotlighted the growing use of cybercrime, migration flows, global supply chains, and legal loopholes by transnational trafficking rings.
According to NAPTIP, among the fastest-growing forms of recruitment used by traffickers are: Fake job offers and overseas scholarships, online loan schemes where traffickers demand prostitution as repayment and recruitment into Yahoo-Yahoo scams across Nigeria, Ghana. and other West African countries.
Others are: Digital sextortion and revenge porn, use of victims as “marketing agents” to mask exploitation and baby factories and illegal organ harvesting operations
“The online loan tactic is especially alarming,” Bello noted. “Victims are lured with promises of fast loans, only to be blackmailed and trafficked into sex work under threat of exposure or violence.”
To combat the rise in tech-enabled trafficking, NAPTIP has boosted the capacity of its Cybercrime Squad to monitor, trace, and shut down online recruitment channels.
“We will scale our strategies and increase collaboration with other agencies to outsmart the traffickers,” Bello declared. “In the coming months, human traffickers will find Nigeria a very hostile ground.”
She stressed the need for non-state actors, civil society, and traditional institutions to unite in protecting Nigerians, especially in underserved and border communities where vulnerability is highest.
“Let’s set rivalry aside and work together. The time has come to kick human traffickers out of Nigeria once and for all,” she urged.
Also speaking at the event, Mr. Cheikh Toure, Country Representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), reaffirmed the UN’s commitment to helping Nigeria dismantle trafficking networks.
“Trafficking is not a random crime; it is an organised, profit-driven industry that preys on the poor and desperate,” he said.
Toure emphasised the need for cross-border coordination, community-led prevention, and support for survivors.
“We must act where vulnerability is highest in slums, rural areas, among marginalised youth to stop this evil at the source,” he stated. “UNODC will continue working with Nigeria to shatter these criminal empires and build a future where no one is bought or sold.”
With Nigeria serving as both a source and destination for human trafficking, stakeholders at the event called for increased grassroots sensitization, legislative reform, and rigorous prosecution of traffickers.
As the digital age fuels new forms of exploitation, both NAPTIP and its global partners warn that inaction is not an option.
“Human trafficking weakens our national fabric, targets our youth, and violates every standard of human dignity,” Bello concluded. “Together, we must rise to end it.”