The Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Julie Okah-Donli, has said the agency is set to clamp down on illegal football academies involved in human trafficking abroad.

The DG Stated this when she received a delegation of Ambassadors of Human Trafficking on the Platform of the Devatop Centre for Africa Development,led by the Consultant/Project Advisor Arinze Egemonye in Abuja yesterday.

Speaking at the event Ms Okah-Donli said “it has become urgent for the agency to clamp down on fake football Academies because many of them are being used to promote human trafficking while their victims are often raped,but cannot come out to cry out.

“Apart from football Academies we also have them promising people jobs abroad,modelling agencies taking them for Hajj,Pilgrimages and some of them are even abducted and do not even know where they are going and what they are going for,so we are beginning to find them out and clamp them down” She said

Lamenting that human trafficking is a not just a crime against humanity but God, the DG said there can never be too many partners in the fight against trafficking.

She stressed that the Agency is very effective and not over stretched,noting that there are so many factors responsible for increasing human trafficking including greed, poverty,illiteracy, peer and family pressures among others.

The DG stressed the need to partner with Devatop and other partners in areas of awareness which she assured the agency is very passionate about.

She commended the Group in it’s efforts in empowering over 5000 Volunteers and urged them to continue to feed the agency with necessary data on the number of rescued victims.

She maintained that volunteering is another vital aspect of the fight against human trafficking and stressed the need to partner with them towards producing a movie that will create awareness to curb human trafficking.

Speaking earlier, Mr Egemonye said Devatop was set up in 2013 for the need to join voices in the fight against human trafficking.

Mr Egemonye said Devatop had empowered over 5000 as advocates and also working on enlightenment campaign through a mobile app tagged ‘if you see am talk am”

He added that the target is to get the youths involved and build a nation without human trafficking even as he stressed that they had trained 100 volunteers in partnership with NAPTIP

He lamented that with 27million women and girls bring trafficked globally,there was the need to empower and encourage people to volunteer to have more people in the field.

Also speaking one of the Anti trafficking Ambassadors, John Fashanu, stressed the need to curb the activities of illegal football Academies as many of the young people taken are trafficked are and raped abroad.

Conveyed by: TODAY