Nigeria, France launch five-country PROTECT project against human trafficking networks

Nigeria and France have launched a five-country project to dismantle human trafficking networks across West Africa, moving the fight beyond individual arrests to the financial systems and cross-border routes that sustain the trade.

The PROTECT project, funded by the French Development Agency (AFD) and implemented by Expertise France, was inaugurated in Abuja on Monday at a validation workshop attended by intelligence and senior officers of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP). It covers Nigeria, Benin, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Speaking at the event, NAPTIP Director-General Binta Adamu-Bello said traffickers were increasingly using social media and other digital platforms to recruit, communicate with and exploit victims, while taking advantage of economic hardship, unemployment, conflicts, displacement and irregular migration routes.

“Trafficking is no longer confined to identifiable physical locations or traditional recruitment methods,” Adamu-Bello said, adding that the growing use of technology had made the crime more complex to combat.

She said NAPTIP had intensified public enlightenment across communities, schools, markets, transport corridors and religious institutions, while warning that effective enforcement must also target the financial foundations of trafficking through the identification, tracing and recovery of proceeds. She also raised concern over delays in court cases, calling for timely conclusion of trafficking prosecutions.

Modeste Krah, head of the PROTECT project, said the initiative follows the 4Ps approach of prevention, protection, prosecution and partnership, with emphasis on stronger institutions, gender-sensitive responses, cross-border cooperation and the use of quality data.

The project builds on cooperation between Expertise France and NAPTIP from 2019 to 2024, which produced the digital travel declaration platform (TICAP), a 627 toll-free reporting line and renovated NAPTIP facilities in Ondo State. It is built around five components covering institutional coordination, the criminal justice chain, victim protection with repatriation and reintegration support, cross-border cooperation, and data systems.

The PROTECT Nigerian Committee is scheduled to meet on September 22, 2026, for the formal adoption of the Nigerian Action Plan and Theory of Change.

The launch marks the beginning of a multi-year intervention aimed at strengthening prevention, victim protection and prosecution across the five participating countries.

Sources: News Agency of Nigeria, The Gazelle News