ERADICATING ALL FORMS OF SLAVERY

Government must do more to reduce poverty

Slavery is 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, most are usually unaware of the full extent of the predicament at the beginning.

As Nigeria therefore joins other countries to mark the 2026 International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, we must not only remember the past but also work for a future in which our people would not be in any form of slavery. The theme for this year’s celebration, ‘Justice in Action: Confronting History, Advancing Dignity, Empowering Futures’, advocates fostering dignity for people of African descent by confronting historical truths. But as it has been demonstrated over the years across the continent, 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.

The Global Slavery Index (GSI) 2026 by the Walk Free Foundation (WFF) is worthy of attention by authorities in Nigeria and critical stakeholders. Since vulnerability to slavery scores range from One to 100, with lower scores indicating less vulnerability and higher scores indicating greater vulnerability, the 76 score for Nigeria indicates a prevalence of this malaise. With government response scores also ranging from One to 100, with lower scores indicating less government action and higher scores indicating increased government action, we can infer that the score of 54 indicates that efforts are being made by the authorities in our country to deal with the challenge. But slavery manifests in different forms in our country today.

What makes the Nigerian condition more worrisome 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. But perhaps the greater forms of slavery is practiced within our domestic environment.

Most 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, the shameful Nigerian profile is a reflection of the severity of the scourge across the African continent that is identified as home to the largest prevalence of slavery on earth, with more than seven per cent of every 1000 people as victims.

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.