THE recent warning by the Nigeria Immigration Service on the dangers lurking for youths embarking on illegal migration has really called for concern . The service at a sensitization forum warned youths to desist from such journey, stating that many Nigerian youths have had their organs harvested and perished in the process
ORGANS harvesting is a form of modern slavery where an individual’s organs are surgically removed illegally for sale on the black market. Organ transplants are becoming increasingly commonplace. This increasing demand is not matched by a similar surge in supply. Consequently, through desperation, many sick individuals are turning to the black market to source their organs, facilitating a hotbed of criminal activity.
TRAFFICKING of human beings for the purpose of organ removal is not a new phenomenon . It is estimated that the illegal trade of human organs generates about 1.5 billion dollars each year from roughly 12,000 illegal transplants.
ORGAN trafficking is a broad concept that includes several illegal activities, of which the main goal is to profit from human organs and tissue, for the sole purpose of transplantation. These activities include transplant tourism and trafficking in organs and tissues . Despite international and domestic efforts, about 10 percent of all transplants worldwide are believed to be illegal, approximately 12,000 organs per year . While the number of reports on victims of trafficking in people has increased, only 700 victims were detected from 25 countries between 2006 and 2019.
MAXIMUM frustration has become the hallmark of youths in the country who are deadly fomented by their inability to secure decent jobs are forced to take a flight into danger.
In Nigeria, a lot of youths struggle to get the required education with no hope of getting befitting jobs. And it is even easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for students to get jobs after the completion of their studies. This is available for their counterparts abroad. A window to even work while studying is a kind of benefit that is available for studying abroad because the courses are so flexible with the time that students who want to work can do so.
THEY therefore resort to travel out of the country at all costs. Those whose parents can afford it go through either education or other means while those who are fortunate take their fates into their hands and therefore decided to go through the Mediterranean Sea, passing Libya or Eritrea.
THESE are the set of people whose organs are being harvested. In attempt to cross, migrants have to subject themselves to trekking the desert and the Mediterranean sea with loss of lives. Migrants are also sold to organ merchants and if they are unable to pay their fare across the sea, they risk their organs been for ably her vested by shylock men.
Over the past few years, traffickers have more and more targeted vulnerable migrants and refugees in camps. The market for parts of the human body is booming in the Middle East. A kidney now costs $262, 000; the heart costs $119, 000 and liver costs $157, 000.
WE therefore urge our youths to beware of fake foreign agencies promising to process their papers, pay plane ticket and just take them abroad, pretending they want to find job, but instead, they kill their victims, recover all the precious parts of their bodies.
MANY people have been offered jobs in the Middle East and so far their families have been unable to locate them.
WE also call on all government agencies against human trafficking to be more alert to their constitutional duties and protect the lives of our teeming youths who are desperate to leave the country at all costs.
MEANWHILE, at the root of human trafficking in Nigeria is endemic poverty which has been a veritable tool in the hands of traffickers to lure their victims into illicit jobs with promises of taking them into paradise.
WE challenge government, at all levels, to address the prevalent poverty ravaging the land and offer meaningful hope of livelihood to frustrated young Nigerian men and women who are often victims of trafficking. We also task NAPTIP to live up to its responsibilities by engaging in massive enlightenment campaigns against trafficking, particularly in the rural areas of the country where this scourge is now prevalent.
