TACKLING MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
All the stakeholders should do more to empower Nigerians to live with dignity
Despite the disclosure by the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) chairperson, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, that about 7000 Nigerian immigrants are stranded in Libya, it was very telling that this year’s International Day for the Remembrance of Slave Trade and Its Abolition was not marked in the country last Saturday. Perhaps because of the mistaken belief that slavery has been completely abolished in Nigeria. But someone does not have to be in chains and ferried across the Atlantic Ocean or Sahara Desert to be a slave. They become slaves when transaction is made with them as commodities. That is the situation with most of these irregular migrants who end up in Libya after being enabled to leave the country by human traffickers.
No human being deserves to be a slave at any time, going by the definition of modern slavery. “The status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised,” according to the Slavery Convention of the League of Nations (now United Nations) adopted in 1926. “It refers to the situation of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power.” To worsen the impact of the practice, the exchange could be with or without the victim’s prior knowledge, usually unaware of the full extent of the predicament at the beginning.
Although the Global Slavery Index (GSI) 2023 by the Walk Free Foundation (WFF) commends Nigeria’s response to the challenge of modern slavery by taking steps to support survivors and addressing some of the risk factors, the report also states that “Nigeria is among the most vulnerable countries to modern slavery in Africa and has the fifth highest prevalence of modern slavery in the region.” The 2023 GSI estimates that on any given day in 2021, there were 1.6 million individuals living in modern slavery in Nigeria. This translates to about 7.8 people in modern slavery for every thousand people in the country.
Available reports indicate that majority of the affected persons are forced into domestic, industrial and commercial labour, marriages or are simply given out to relations under innocuous circumstances. Not surprisingly, this shameful profile reflects the severity of the scourge across Africa. A continent that has been identified as home to the largest prevalence of slavery on earth, with more than seven per cent of every 1000 people as victims.
What makes the Nigerian condition more worrying is its ignoble recognition as one of the world’s leading culprits in three critical areas: source, transit and destination. Europe and North Africa have continued to benefit from the growing incidence of emigration among Nigerians in search of the proverbial greener pastures. But instead of actualising their dreams, many of them end up being sexually exploited – one of the most widespread forms of present-day captivity – or trapped in other ways. Sadly, not even stories of the tortuous and precarious journeys through the Sahara to Libya and then, less frequently to Europe have been able to dissuade our young men and women from gambling with their lives. Consequently, many of them have caused themselves harm, brought sorrow to their relations and further tarnished the already battered international image of our country.
Interestingly, the WFF gives the main factors promoting this contemporary bondage as poverty, economic crises, physical conflicts and environmental disasters. The abundant presence of these evils in Nigeria today requires bold, well-designed and executed government interventions which could hopefully serve as catalysts for more productive involvement of the private sector in this campaign. Only concerted, collaborative efforts aimed at empowering the populace and restoring the dignity of the citizenry can effectively curb or eliminate the current manifestations of servitude.
