When William Wilberforce and other abolitionists achieved their aim of ending slavery, little did they know that this act of man’s inhumanity to man would continue in other forms, long after they had departed this world.
Similarly, in the early 60s, Herbert Marshall McLuhan, a globally-acclaimed scholar of media studies posited that the world would soon become a global village, where electronic media predominates as the world gets more digitally connected with new technologies driving connectivity and making experience sharing easier than before.
However, McLuhan did not see how the baser elements in society would take advantage of the global village for pecuniary benefits. One such area is human trafficking, where perpetrators have used visual technologies to paint rosy pictures of life in other climes, with the intent of luring undiscerning people into conditions from which only the perpetrators can profit.
In particular, traffickers have taken advantage of increasing unemployment, worsening mass poverty and economic crisis in Nigeria, to cajole hordes of people to Ghana and other countries, for personal gain
As the world gets more digitally connected than ever before, human traffickers are taking advantage of the increasing rate of unemployment, mass poverty and economic crisis in Nigeria, to export droves of her citizens to Ghana and other West Africa countries, for personal gains.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, said Nigeria has the highest number of unidentified victims of trafficking in West Africa.
Investigation revealed that not less than 180 Nigerian youths board vehicles weekly, from the ECOWAS garage located at Mile-Two, on the Lagos-Badagry expressway, Nigeria, where vehicles conveying passengers to the Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Morocco and other West African countries, are stationed.
A good percentage of these youths : males and females between 19 and 35 years, were discovered to be heading for the Republic of Ghana, either on the promise of a scholarship to study in some tertiary institutions or job opportunities.
But they realize too late, upon arrival, that they are victims of human trafficking for cybercrime.