By Nkiru Nnorom
United States government has indicted Nigeria for failing to meet minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, citing corruption, official complicity, and government failure to prosecute complicit officials.
It also listed Nigeria among 14 countries recruiting and using child soldiers.
This is contained in the 2026 Trafficking in Persons, TIP, Report, which covers April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026.
The report retained Nigeria on Tier 2, a category defined as countries whose governments do not fully meet the Trafficking Victims Protection Act minimum standards but were making significant efforts to meet the requirements.
It equally placed Nigeria on the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, CSPA, list alongside Afghanistan, Burma, Central African Republic, DRC, Ethiopia, Iran, Russia, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen.
The U.S Department of State noted in the report that CSPA restrictions would apply to Nigeria on international military education and training, foreign military financing, excess defense articles, peacekeeping operations and licences for direct commercial sales of military equipment, absent in presidential waiver from October 1, 2026, following the CSPA listing.
The State Department, however, noted that the government demonstrated increasing efforts, including investigations, prosecutions, and convictions, compared with the previous reporting period and retained the country on Tier 2.
The indictments
The US, which noted that corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, said: “The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees allegedly complicit in trafficking crimes or provide details or other actions taken against complicit officials from previous years.”
It noted that in many cases, the government coerced victims of forced marriage, including trafficking victims, to return to their Boko Haram husbands in Borno State demobilisation centers.
It noted the government’s failure to protect victims, saying in 2025, 675 trafficking victims received assistance, compared to 2,058 victims the previous year, services, especially for male victims, remained limited.
According to the report, there is only one dedicated NGO shelter for adult male victims during the year.
“NAPTIP’s shelters did not permit shelter residents freedom of movement. The government required victims to cooperate in law enforcement proceedings to access certain protection services.
‘’The government did not provide services to adult victims who declined shelter services, increasing their vulnerability.
“The government did not have a formal policy to prevent the removal of victims to countries where they would face hardship or retribution.”
“Unlike the previous year, the government did not report transferring any children associated with non-state armed groups,” it said.
Weak labour protection
It alleged further: “The government did not prohibit worker-paid recruitment fees… did not report holding labour recruiters liable civilly and criminally for fraudulent recruitment and did not provide specialized training on child labour and human trafficking to labour inspectors. The government did not provide anti-trafficking training to its diplomatic personnel.”
On child soldiers, it stated that “Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa continue recruiting, abducting, and using, including through force, fraud, and coercion, child soldiers as young as 12 years old as cooks, domestic workers, spies, porters, messengers, bodyguards or guards at checkpoints, morality police, armed combatants, and suicide bombers.”
The report defined child soldier to include any person under 18 who takes direct part in hostilities, any person under 15 voluntarily recruited, or any person under 18 recruited by armed forces distinct from the state, including as cook, porter, messenger, medic, guard or sex slave.
Foreign exploitation and new trends
The report said highly organised foreign criminal syndicates fraudulently recruit foreign victims for work in Nigeria, confine them in leased properties, and force them to conduct organised online scams.
“Sources reported Nigeria’s Ministry of Education helped promote Russia’s Alabuga Start program despite red flags.
“Russian authorities fraudulently recruit and use Nigerians to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war. North Korean nationals working in Nigeria may be operating under exploitative working conditions and display multiple indicators of forced labour. Chinese nationals working in Nigeria may have been forced to work by the Chinese government,” it added.
Baby factories, forced labour, sex trafficking
It stated that illicit actors operate ‘baby factories’, which were often disguised as orphanages, maternity homes, or religious center where traffickers hold women against their will, rape them, and force them to carry and deliver a child.
“They then sell the children… The government and NGOs describe the factories as a widespread criminal industry most prevalent in the southern part of the country.
“Traffickers exploit children in sex trafficking and forced labour, including in granite quarries and artisanal mines, domestic work, begging, street vending, textile manufacturing, and agriculture. Traffickers exploit adults and children in forced labor on cocoa farms.
“Some corrupt Quranic school teachers exploit children, mostly boys from rural areas, in forced labour in begging and seasonal agricultural work.
“In some states, families sell women and girls into forced marriages to older men to repay family debt in the traditional practice of ‘money marriages,’’ the report stated.
The positives
Despite the barrage of indictments, the report acknowledged several strides made by the government in arresting trafficking.
It noted that the government investigated 1,341 trafficking cases involving 1,367 suspects, prosecuted 94 suspects, convicted 97 traffickers in 2025, an increase from 744 investigations, 71 prosecutions and 49 convictions in 2024.
The report said the government also sentenced the majority of convicted traffickers to at least one year imprisonment and increased funding for victim services.
In 2025, it said the government allocated N233 million ($161,000) for victim services, up from N128 million, while N245 million ($169,000) was allocated for prevention, up from N58.8 million in 2024.
The government, it said, established a cybercrime unit within the police to combat online scam operations and cooperated with other governments and INTERPOL on investigations in West Africa and Southeast Asia.
It further identified 2,004 victims, maintained SOPs and National Referral Mechanism, coordinated repatriation of 428 Nigerian victims exploited abroad.
The report added the government issued restitution for 14 victims as part of criminal sentences and continued to implement the 2022-2026 National Action Plan, operated an anti-trafficking hotline, conducted public awareness, and had anti-trafficking task forces in 23 states.
The post Child soldiers, baby factories: US indicts Nigeria over official complicity appeared first on Vanguard News.