AN APPRAISAL OF THE LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE PROHIBITION OF TRAFFIC IN PERSONS IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Background to the Research

The people of African had experienced slavery and inhuman treatment. For example an estimated 11.5 million people were taken from their ancestral homes as slaves to other parts of the world¹, using trickery, banditry, warfare, and kidnapping as modes of operation. A calamity of such magnitude has no analogous in any other part of the world. Slave capturing and exporting sapped Africa of millions of its abled, strongest and most capable youths between the ages of 15 and 25². That is, between 15^th and 19^th centuries, the productive segments of the African society were shiped out of Africa, which permanently weakened the continent. This was followed by colonisation by Europeans. All these engendered racism and contempt of Africans³, thereby destroying the economic life of Africa and Nigeria in particular. The slave trade took place in enormous volume between the 17^th and 19^th centuries, evidencing a darker historical era that saw the removal of people from Africa, and Nigeria in particular to plantations in Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean as slaves⁴. The indulgence in slave trade became a holy cause for mistreatment that had the support of church⁵. A desire for glory and profit from trade couple with missionary zeal brought Portuguese navigator to West African coast and Nigeria in the late 15 century. Portugal‘s lasting legacy for Nigeria is the initiation of Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as trade in slaves proved to be more money-spinning than trade in gold. Consequently, Africans who were interested in acquiring European goods such as cooking utensils, intoxicating beverages, guns, ammunition and cloths were encouraged by the European slave traders to acquire African captives in exchange for these goods. This ultimately discouraged internal trade and incentives for Africans to engage in supporting the Europeans in the trade of human cargo which further served as a disruptive factor in the economics life of the Nigerian society⁶.

In 16^th century, the Portuguese monopoly of West African trade was broken by the naval power of the Netherlands as the Dutch took over Portuguese trading stations on the coast that were the source of slaves for the Americans⁷. Dutch‘s position was later undermined by the French and the English competition whereas Demark, Sweden, including other European maritime countries, North American Colonies and Britain became the dominant slaving powers in the 18^th century. In the 19^th century, 30% of all slaves sent across the Atlantic were Nigerians, most of them were Yoruba and Igbo with significant concentration of Hausas, Ibibio and other ethnic groups⁸, while Aro confederacy and Oyo polities were responsible for most of the slave exported from Nigeria⁹. The researcher submits that history of human trafficking is directly connected to transatlantic slave trade. When one tries to gauge the consequence of European slave trading on the continent of African and Nigeria in particular, it is vital to appreciate that one is measuring the end product of social violence and capital in the export of Africans, particularly, Nigerians rather than trade in any normal common sense or sense of the word. Thus, it is safe and sound to declare that the accumulation of capital, as a result of free African labour utilized in the slave trade, provided the basis for the rise of the industrial revolution, capitalist production and the export of capital to colonial territories by Europe¹¹