Nigeria last attained Tier 1 status in the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report in 2011 and has not done so since.
This is as the country’s ranking fluctuated between Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 2 (Watch List) from 2001 to 2023, annual reports published for 22 years revealed.
The annual TiPR categorises countries into four tiers as mandated by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
They include Tier 1, countries whose governments meet the TVPA’s minimum standards.
Tier 2 contains countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to meet those standards come under Tier 2.
Tier 2 Watch List contains countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to meet those standards.
For countries on the Watch List, the State Department says the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking must be very significant or is significantly increasing.
Such countries, it explained, failed to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, including increased investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of trafficking crimes, increased assistance to victims, and decreasing evidence of complicity in severe forms of trafficking by government officials; or the determination that a country is making significant efforts to meet the minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year.
The last group is Tier 3 has countries whose governments do not fully meet the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.
Countries ranked Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years and that would otherwise be ranked Tier 2 Watch List for the next year will instead be ranked Tier 3 in that third year, a 2008 amendment to the TVPA stipulated.
In 2009, 2010 and 2011, Nigeria maintained Tier 1 status in the global counter-human trafficking standing.
However, re-attaining this ranking has proven elusive for over a decade. Rather, it slipped to the Tier 2 Watch List in 2017, 2018 and 2020, respectively, the same status held in 2004 and 2008.
So far, Nigeria has been ranked a Tier 2 country for a cumulative span of 13 years; 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The 2023 report gave reasons that may be responsible for this.
“There are approximately two million IDPs in the country and over 340,000 Nigerian refugees in other countries; many of these IDPs and refugees are vulnerable to traffickers due to their limited access to economic opportunity and formal justice systems.
“Violence stemming from expanding terrorist threats exacerbated the vulnerability of many IDPs and limited the government’s ability to respond to the trafficking threat throughout much of the North,” the State Department said.
It cited previous reports in which traffickers exploited IDPs moving to cities such as Gombe and Kano and neighbouring countries such as Niger in forced labor.
The Executive Director of the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation, Imaobong Ladipo-Sanusi, said more inter-agency collaboration was the easiest way to stem the tide of trafficking and raise Nigeria’s global standing.
“We have instituted robust mechanisms to combat trafficking, raise awareness and facilitate victim rehabilitation,” the official added.
