Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs, Tolulope Akande-Sadipe, has called on the Federal Government to urgently put a stop to the exploitation of Nigerians abroad.
Sadipe, who represents Oluyole Federal Constituency Representative, said 80,000 Nigerian girls were currently held as sex slaves and in forced labour in Mali and in Middle East countries of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia UAE and Oman.
She alleged that the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, under the supervision of Dr. Chris Ngige, had violated the law by continuing to issue international recruiters licences to agents, despite Federal Government’s 2017 moratorium.
Sadipe stated this, yesterday, at a press briefing, lamenting that Nigeria has no Bilateral Labour Agreement with any nation and that the execution of the Standing Operating Procedure (SOP) had been lingering.
“Federal Government placed a moratorium on issuance of international recruiters licence in September 2017 and yet the Ministry of Labour and Productivity as at January 2020 was still issuing international recruiters licenses,”she said.
She added that many nations in the Middle East and even within Africa were violating the rights of Nigerian citizens under the guise of domestic servitude. Sadipe who lamented the fate of over 80,000 Nigerian girls in forced labour and sex slaves in Mali and the Middle East said: “The question we must ask is how they got there? We have called out Immigration but then again the Ministry of Labour is also complicit.”