Hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked every year in Nigeria, and the majority of them sexually exploited, a senior church cleric has warned.
"A disturbing fact is that in parts of West Africa the majority of those trafficked are children below the age of 18," the Archbishop of Jos, Ignatius Ayau Kaigama, told delegates at the International Conference against Human Trafficking in Africa, in Abuja.
He urged the conference to "find ways of ending child labour in all its forms".
He warned that of those trafficked in Africa, 79 per cent are sexually exploited – the majority of them women. A fifth are forced into labour.
The Archbishop urged the Nigerian government "to look at the issue of trafficking in persons as a national disgrace and take urgent and lasting steps to deal with the root causes", including by allocating more resources to the cause.
The conference was organised by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Migrants, and attended by more than 130 human trafficking experts and representatives from faith organisations.
According to a representative from Caritas, the UN's former special rapporteur on trafficking, Professor Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, told the conference: "The scale of trafficking is huge. People have a desire to improve their lives. I say trafficking is migration gone wrong".
Cardinal Luis Tagle, president of Caritas Internationalis, warned that victims of human trafficking are "hiding in plain sight" in countries all around the world, including Europe.
"Slavery starts when people do not respect their own humanity, their bodies and their spiritual potential. They see themselves and consequently other persons as mere instruments or objects to attain some goal, especially money, profit, influence or power," he said.
The UK's anti-slavery comissioner, Kevin Hyland, said: "One victim is one victim too many."
