Two underage girls have been rescued from the hands of a suspected human trafficker by men of the Nigeria Immigration Service.
According to the information available to NIGERIACRIME the NIS officers arrested the suspect at the service’s Alimosho Passport Front Office in Lagos State while attempting to take the girls out of the country.
The suspect was said to have pretended to be the mother of the girls and told the officers at the passport office that they needed the passports to travel out.
She reportedly works for a trafficking ring.
However, she was caught due to the age difference between her and the underage girls, which led to her immediate arrest at the passport office.
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She confessed, during her interrogation that the young girls were being transported abroad for commercial exploitation.
Confirming this, the Passport Control Officer, Mrs Ayoola Malaolu, told newsmen that officers of the NIS had apprehended several human traffickers who came to the Alimosho NIS Passport Front Office.
Malaolu appealed to passports applicants to always go through the online application process and payment platform, as well as to exercise patience and follow the queue, assuring them that they would be attended to.
An official of the NIS who spoke anonymously said, “It seems traffickers think because this passport office is new, they will have it easy. It is not possible here as we scrutinise every form and ensure due diligence.
“We have had instances where people wanted to procure passports for adopted children to take them overseas. Those who have legal documents of adoption were directed to Abuja because only the Comptroller General of Immigration has the final say on such issues.
“For those who did illegal adoptions, they came posing that the babies were their biological kids but were uncovered by our diligent officers. When certain documents were required from them, some of them didn’t come back.”