CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Crime has become one of the greatest obstacles to the better realization of democratic governance and the much acclaimed millennium development goals (MDGs) in Nigeria.
The country is being bedeviled by all forms of crime, which range from simple acts of thefts, burglary and verbal assault to serious acts of robbery, economic and financial crime ethnic and religious disturbance “cultism and sexual harassment in institutions of learning youths restiveness and trafficking of human beings. All the segments of the population in Nigeria, including the elites and the youths, at one point or another commit these criminal acts. Both rural and urban cities have suffered from these undesirable activities the degree of the crime rate has gone far beyond the tolerance limit of the safety and has consequently attained disturbing dimensions to the extent that social economic and political activities are seriously attached, given this situation academic government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as the international community have sought an understanding of the various dimension of the phenomenon including its level manifestation causes and implications for all segment of the societies. 12
These efforts have been with the singular desire of devising appropriate strategies towards the effective management of the problems, however, this study has focused on the effect of communication on trafficking in human commodities.
In some selected states in Nigeria, its aim was to measure the problems of human trafficking in terms of the attributes of the rectums, the pattern of human flow, and the casual factors. The specific objectives were to discovers the socio-economic attributes of victims of human trafficking determines the pattern of flow establish the underlying factors, and make appropriate recommendation towards curbing human trafficking in Nigeria.
In 1995, as at the time of the belging conference the issue of human trafficking was not regarded as an issue of concern for Africans it was a problem considered as the Asian and Latin American people the unfolding events since the almost ten years that human trafficking is rife in the countries has been found to be source, transit and destination country for the crime of human trafficking.
In West African, the incident of human trafficking in women and children were dated as far back as the 1960s. However, the significant public recognition and focus on issue only come since the mid 70s. Although there are no exact figures and data on the number of trafficking victims, there are indicators to show that the trend is assuming an alarming rate in the sub-regions. One of such indicators is the growing population of women and children particularly children in the West African city centre and European countries as a result of urban migration and illegal trans-border migration with exploitative labor.
The challenges of searching for a sustainable solution to the menace of human trafficking and child labor led to the decisions by the Ekiti-State broadcasting services to commission this as part of their programmes. 13
Records show that over 400,000 children work in Benin and approximately 625,000 children from cote D’ ivoire are in labor. Most of the children are under the ages of 15 years. According to research carried out, it has found that a large percentage of these children in labor are trafficked victim. The violence are spelled out sanction against those who engage in slavery and laid down procedure for victims restitution. The daily champion of 12 July, 2002 reported than 80% of foreign prostitution in Italy were Nigerian women.
Nigerian was categorized in tier 2 of the trafficking in persons country list for 2001 compelled by the United State government and the transparency international. The tier lists states that do not meet minimum standards of combating human trafficking, but are making efforts to do so.