About 80,000 Nigerians are stranded in different countries where they are being held as sex slaves or subjected to forced labour, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, Tolulope Akande-Sadipe, has alleged.
Akande-Sadipe, stated this in a statement on Sunday, citing Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East as having the bulk of Nigerians in this terrible situation.
She said, “The current and ongoing sordid dehumanizing treatments foisted on Nigerians abroad particularly trafficked girls under the cover of foreign domestic staff has become very disturbing,” she said in a statement.
“According to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), in the past one year, there has been an alarming number of daily distress calls from Nigerian women crying to be rescued due to the inhumane conditions they face in various parts of the Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Oman and Lebanon and Mali, with Lebanon, Oman and Mali being top on the list.”
The lawmaker also said some Nigerian students in Turkey were being faced with hardship which had made it impossible for them to return home as they could not afford the fares for their evacuation flight.
She urged the House of Representatives to prevail on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to negotiate for an affordable fare to be paid by Nigerians in diaspora seeking to return to the country.
Sadipe had earlier moved a motion under matters of urgent public importance at the plenary on Thursday to condemn the lacklustre attitude of ministries of Foreign Affairs, Labour and Employment to the matter. She accused them of complacency and blamed their attitude for being partly responsible for the hardship faced by these Nigerians in foreign lands in the form of modern-day slavery, sexual exploitation and organ harvesting, among other ill-treatment being meted out to them, especially some Nigerian young girls.
