Nigeria has been named by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as among the eight countries considered the highest in human trafficking in the world.

National Project Officer of UNODC, Ms. Amina Abdulrahman, made the comment in an address presented on behalf of the Country Representative of the body, Mrs. Dagmar Thomas, at the launch of the second phase of the UNODC/UNICRI-assisted project entitled: "Preventing and Combating Trafficking of Minors and Young Women from Nigeria to Italy," in Benin over the weekend.

Abdulrahman mentioned Thailand, China, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, as the other seven countries tagged by a recent UNODC report as Nigeria's counterparts in the despicable record of most trafficked persons in the world.

She also said the most common destinations of most trafficked persons were Italy, Thailand, Japan, Israel, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Turkey and the United States.

She stated further that 2.5 million people were being "recruited, entrapped, transported, and exploited" in the heinous process of trafficking in persons across the world "at any given time."

According to her, of the 36 states in Nigeria, Edo remained one of the most endemic states from where young girls were being trafficked into prostitution in Italy.

Abdulrahman said most children and women trafficked from the rural communities in the country to the urban areas and outside the country were cruelly exploited as domestic helps and objects of sex who end up in most cases as criminals.

Describing the scourge as "a modern form of slavery and the worst form of human rights violations in the twenty first century," she demanded that the modern-day trade in human beings should be combated forcefully.