The National Assembly yesterday prescribed a minimum of 10 years imprisonment for persons convicted of human trafficking in addition to paying fines while revealing that the country records a minimum of eight million child-labourers.
This was the popular opinion of the stakeholders at a joint public hearing on the Bill for an Act to Repeal the Trafficking in Persons, Prohibition Law Enforcement Administration Act 2003.
Declaring open the public hearing yesterday, Senate President David Mark explained that modern slavery still exists at home, factories as well as behind closed doors in the cities.
Mark noted that the public hearing, organised by the joint committee represented another major achievement in the national campaign designed to take the fight against human trafficking to a higher level.
The bill, according to the Senate President informed the joint committee of the National Assembly’s full participation in the organisation of the public hearing to redefine and redesign the bill to meet the challenges posed by the act as serious threat to national security as well as denigrates human dignity and our collective common values system and norms.
The proposed legislative trafficking bill has been defined and broadened to include activities such as procurement or recruitment of any person for organ harvesting.
The bill according to Mark has also been worked to provide for greater integration of counter-trafficking strategies with a wider range of state security agencies and Civil Society Organizations, CSOs.
Also in her address, chairman House of Representatives committee on Human Rights, Child Trafficking and Justice, Hon. Beni Lar, stressed the need for the lawmakers to make provisions where parents that do not care for their Child / wards could be charged for criminal liability for failing to verify where their children are being taken to because this could account for negligent.
According to Lar, the problem of human trafficking in Nigeria is real and compelling, stressing that “it is multifaceted and one that violates fundamental human rights, increases global health risks, contributes to transnational organised crime, and undermines national, regional and international security and stability”.
Hon. Lar regretted that Nigeria was currently a source, transit and destination country for women and children subjected to forced prostitution, adding that Nigerian boys were often trafficked for purpose of street vending, domestic service, mining, stone quarries, agriculture and begging amongst others.
As a result, she asserted that the time to address the problem was now, ‘’this is the time to address it.’’
Earlier, Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters Sen. Dahiru Kuta said that trafficking in persons was a threat to national security.
“Trafficking in persons denigrates human dignity and our collective common value system and norms.”
The chairman said it was as a result of NASS’s commitment to putting an end to the menace of human trafficking that a punitive regime was introduced into the proposed law.
He expressed optimism that the bill would enjoy speedy passage.