Rivers Immigration hands over three under-aged girls, suspects to NAPTIP

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Rivers State Command has handed over three young girls rescued from a failed journey to Ghana for prostitution to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), to reunite with their families.

The handover was done by the State Comptroller of Immigration, AJ Kwasua, who said the girls were rescued by men of the anti-human trafficking unit of the Command at a popular joint in Port Harcourt on November 4.

Briefing newsmen at the Command Headquarters, on Monday, Kwasua a nursing mother aged 21, who facilitated the traveling was also arrested.

According to him, “As you may know. today is an important day for the Nigeria Immigration Service in Rivers State.

“It is the day we are launching our programme on sensitisation on the smuggling of migrants and we have just finished the opening ceremony and fortunately it coincides with practical examples for us to educate the public for them to understand the reality of what we are doing.

“When we go out to talk to people, most times they feel we are just creating stories. But here with us, this morning is an example of illegal migrants who were rescued on November 4, by gallant officers of the anti-human trafficking unit of the Command.

“Three victims were rescued and are under our custody. On November 5, we took another proactive measure to ensure that we capture the recruiter who was said to be in Rivers State as of the time the process of migrating them took place and we arrested her. She was interrogated and she confessed to the crime that she was acting as a syndicate with some recruiters in Edo State.

“The victims are minors. Two are 17 years old and one is 16 years old. Two are from Rivers State while one is from Akwa Ibom.

“They confessed to agreeing to travel to Ghana for prostitution and at the time they were arrested the transporter had already received money from the recruiter via online to pay transport fair for them to Lagos en route Ghana, which he had done already. But based on the incessant calls by the mother of one of the victims, she developed cold feet and could not make the journey anymore. It was in that process we received intel and we swung into action at exactly 8:20 p.m. That was when we arrested them and brought them under our custody.

“This is to tell you that the decision by the current management of NIS to commence this nationwide exercise is to actually curb the menace that is eating up our youths in the guise of going outside the country to look for greener pastures, while in the real sense they are being used as sex slaves.”