Nigerian govt evacuates 15 girls from Mali

The Federal Government on Sunday rescued 15 Nigerian girls trafficked to Mali.

The victims include two pregnant girls and one with a three-year-old boy.

The Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Dr. Fatima Waziri-Azi, who confirmed the development to journalists at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja, said the girls were released through a collaboration with the Network Against Child Trafficking, Abuse and Labour (NACTAL) and Action Against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants in Nigeria (A-TIPSOM).

A-TIPSOM is a project being implemented in Nigeria by the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policy (FIIAP) and sponsored by the European Union (EU).

Waziri-Azi, who was represented at the briefing by the Head of Intelligent and International Corporation Unit, NAPTIP, Mrs. Angela Agbayekhai, said the process started through the information the agency got from NACTAL.

She said: “You will agree with me that it is not just Mali that these children of ours have been, but we are happy today that we have been able to bring back these girls.

READ ALSO: Nigerian girl trafficked to Mali for prostitution cries for help, begs to return home

“It is our hope and plan that we will bring back more of these children, because we have so many of them still out there in Mali.

“Today we have 15 of them with a child of three years, a male child. A fact-finding team who went to Mali in 2017 estimated that there are about 20,000 Nigerians still trafficked there.

“These ones brought back today is a drop in the ocean of the numbers of these Nigerians. This is a good start. We will work with the ministers concerned to bring back as many as possible.

“Bringing them back was not difficult, we had an NGO we work with in Mali, we gathered information, shared intelligence and it was easy to put them together.”

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