The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, Uyo Zonal Command, said it rescued 132 victims of human trafficking in the last eight months in Akwa Ibom State.

The agency’s Director General, Dame Julie Okah-Donli, said this on Thursday, in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom state capital, at a media briefing during her official visit to the state.

She said out of the number, 40 were rescued from sexual exploitation, 28 from baby sellers, 23 from labour exploitation, while the rest were for other exploitation issues.

“Those rescued range from five to 34 years. The record shows that 40 per cent of them were rescued in the Oron Local Government Area because of its strategic trade location as gateway to the Atlantic ocean,” she added.

The DG explained that her mission in the state was to inagurate the Akwa Ibom State Task Force on Human Trafficking and also meet stakeholders, including traditional rulers, faith-based organisations, the civil society in the fight against human trafficking.

The Project Officer, Counter Trafficking and Mixed Migration, in the International Organisation for Migration, Bertha Ngurulu, said the organisation had rescued more than 17,000 Nigerians involved in illegal migration to Libya, Mali and other parts of the world since 2017.