Transnational Organised Crimes: An Assessment of Human Trafficking and the Challenges Militating against a Total Elimination in Nigeria

Abstract

Transnational crimes have remained one of the menaces that has continued to threaten global security, peace, and tranquillity, hence requiring a multilateral and multilevel approach in effectively curtailing them. One among these transnational crimes is human trafficking, which has been estimated to be generating $150.3 billion annually (IMF, 2018), with the Asia-Pacific region ranked as the most lucrative .It is against this background that this paper examines the crime of human trafficking in Nigeria, tracing the evolution of human trafficking in general, the efforts at tackling the crime in Nigeria, as well as some of the challenges hampering the total elimination of the crime in Nigeria. Using secondary sources of data for analysis, the paper identified some of themajor drivers of the crime in Nigeria to include but not limited to, poverty and underdevelopment, weak laws and inadequate enforcement, systematic corruption, stigmatization, sophistication and financial war chest of cartels, influence of the social media, traditional and cultural practices, among others. To mitigate the crime of human trafficking in Nigeria, the paper proffers: the addressing of social in equality, creation of more employment opportunities, awareness campaigns at all levels, and the use of ―triangulated nexus of human-trafficking enforcement‖ among countries, among others.