Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has linked the success recorded by his administration in the fight against human trafficking and illegal migration to reforms in the education, programmes and projects to building the capacity of Edo youths, equipping them to become globally competitive.
Obaseki, while addressing journalists in Benin City, said: “We met a state categorised by the horror of human trafficking and irregular migration. At some point, in 2016, and 2017, we had more than 30,000 young Edo boys and girls, who had got themselves to Libya to cross over to Europe. That was a human horror, a big tragedy for most of them, who will go anywhere else but home.
“It tells you how depressing and hopeless the situation was. I thank God that we are working with the International Organisation for Migration, IOM. We had to set up the Edo State Taskforce Against Human Trafficking, ETAHT, to fight the scourge. We had to admit that we had a problem with human trafficking. We started working with international agencies to help us deal with the situation.”
On how the government was able to tackle the scourge, the governor said: “We started gathering data and obtained information on why a lot of these young people were leaving, trying to understand the underlying issues driving human trafficking and irregular migration.”