26 June 2009
Lagos — The House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora is to liaise with relevant government agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to rescue some 10,000 Nigerian teenage girls trapped in Morocco and Libya.
The 10,000 girls aged between 13 and 17 years are said to be from the Southern part of the country and mostly from Edo State.
The Chairman of the committee, Hon. Abike Dabiri, said this at an interactive session with an Edo-based NGO, Christians Without Borders, in Abuja, which came to express concern over the plight of the girls.
The lawmaker assured the NGO that the committee would work closely with the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
Dabiri said the committee would also embark on an aggressive campaign in conjunction with the state governments to educate parents and girls on the effects of prostitution as well as ensure the proper rehabilitation of the affected girls.
"We are going to be working with you and the committee will try to tackle this matter. We are going to sensitise people in the states."And since most of these girls are from Edo State, we will meet the governor to work out ways of putting this worrisome problem to rest," she assured the NGO.
Earlier, the Coordinator of the NGO, Mr Taye Garrick, told the committee that the 10,000 girls aged between 13 and 17 years were recruited as sex slaves in Nigeria. Garrick explained that they were on their way to Europe when they got trapped in Morocco and Libya.
He said some of the girls were pregnant and infected with various diseases including HIV and AIDS and had been sent to jail in those two countries while others were at the mercy of their slave masters who manhandled them.
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