Osogbo — Eight child traffickers are alredy serving jail terms ranging from three to seven years in different prisons across the country for child trafficking offences.

Head, Investigation and Monitoring Unit of the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Mallam Mohammed Babandede, said this in his paper at a one-day workshop on Public Awareness Campaigns and Advocacy on Trafficking in Women and Children, organised for Journalists in Osun, Kano and Cross River by WOTCLEF.

Babandede said women and children trafficking are now serious offences since 2003, when NAPTIP was established.

He said 20 people are now behind bars, while 25 cases are still on-going in various courts.

He said out of several millions of children between the ages of five and 17 years working in the world, 180 million are in the worst forms of child labour.

According to him, eight percent of the figure are in Latin America, while 30 per cent and 60 per cent are in Africa and Asia respectively.

Babandede said most teenage girls recruited from Nigeria are being used for prostitution in Italy and other parts of Europe, and appealed for war against the illegal act.

In her speech, National Coodinator, Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF), Mrs Veronica Umaru, described trafficking in persons as a modern form of slave trade, adding that "human beings are trafficked for a wide variety of reasons and purposes, all of which are degrading and dehumanising.

which generally increase the state of insecurity of women and children.

According to her, some of the purposes for which human beings are trafficked include domestic labour, sex, forced marriage, begging for alms, forced labour, ritual purposes and organ transplant.

In her paper, Mrs. O. A. Aiyegbusi, Head of Public Enlightenment Unit of NAPTIP urged the media to wage war on Trafficking in persons by educating and mobilizing people to know the effect of the crime.