The Global Initiative Against Illegal Migration (GIAIM), a non-governmental organisation involved in the campaign against human trafficking and irregular Migration has announced its plans to organise inter-school debates amongst high schools in Edo State on human trafficking and Irregular migration.
This, according to Emmanuel Obiyan, Founder /Executive Director of the organisation, is part of its plans to further enlighten and create awareness amongst young school-age children on the evils of human trafficking and irregular migration and further help stem the tide.
“The inter-schools debate will be going on alongside our regular school sensitisation campaigns, which is one of our cardinal points. The pupils will be encouraged to identify what constitute human trafficking and irregular migration, and also explore the causes, consequences and how to check them. Specifically, these schools debate will focus on schools in Edo Central and Edo North, and the top contenders in both zones will now be pitched against each other in a grand finale. You will agree with me that Edo State has one of the highest rate of human trafficking and irregular migration in the country, so we figure that our little efforts would go a long way in curbing the trend.”
Obiyan also announced prizes for the competition, which he said include a laptop for the winning school, N150,000 for the first runner-up school and N100,000 for the second runner-up school.
The competition is expected to kick of this April as part of Global Initiative ‘s first quarter 2022 activities.
Aside the schools’ activities, Obiyan said the organisation will also be organising an interface training and collaboration with security agencies in rural communities in Edo State, also as a measure of checking activities of human traffickers and promoters of irregular migration.
” Starting this April, we will also be organising an interface training and collaboration with the security agencies who are meant to be playing a very pivotal role in checking irregular migration, but who are not doing this because in most rural communities, there are no anti-human trafficking desks. All that they do is charge and bail; so the traffickers are able to exploit the largely ignorant rural dwellers without consequences. We shall be going through the police stations, civil defence corps and local vigilantes, to partner and train them in identifying issues of human trafficking, being proactive and reporting same,” Obiyan said.
In the second quarter through to the third quarter of the year, starting from May, Obiyan said Global Initiative Against Irregular Migration (GIAIM) will be focusing on intensive training in its vocational center located in Edo State for young people. This, as has become the culture of the organisation, is to train and empower young people in vocational and other skills, so they can earn money and not fall easy prey to lurking human traffickers, who target and dangle El Dorado life abroad to them.
“The training” according to Obiyan, “will be a six-month intensive training to take us through to the final quarter of the year. Our areas of focus include: Hair dressing, ICT and Secretarial Management, Fashion Design, Marketing, Business Management, Cosmetology, Catering and Agro-farming.”
In the final quarter of the year, Obiyan said, “We shall be organising a seminar to round off our activities.”
As a further measure, the Edo state-born lawyer called on the Edo State government to create an agency on human trafficking and irregular migration as against the task force that currently exists.
“What we have in Edo State at the moment is a task force against human trafficking, which can be dissolved at any point in time. I am therefore calling on the government of Edo State, who, I admit are not doing badly, to establish an agency, which shall be a permanent government office to fight human trafficking and irregular migration,” Obiyan said.
Asked how he intends to fund most of GIAIM’s loaded activities, Obiyan, a lawyer, who also runs a law firm, Obiyan & Associates, in Lagos, said “I fund them with my private earning, it’s my passion.”
He however admitted that he has in the past got ample support from the Swiss Embassy, saying, “Their support have given us the capacity to be at the forefront in the campaign against illegal migration.”