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Police officers in Akwa Ibom State dismantled an active human trafficking syndicate operating across Nigeria’s southern coast and into Central and West Africa on Friday, rescuing seven victims from three countries during a two-stage operation that began on a state highway and extended to a coastal waterway area from which one of the network’s suspected leaders had already fled to Cameroon and Gabon.
The operation began at approximately 8 a.m. on Friday, March 13, when officers acting on credible intelligence mounted a coordinated stop-and-search exercise along the Ikot Ekpene-Aba Road. A vehicle transporting young persons suspected to be trafficking victims was intercepted, four victims were immediately rescued, and the suspect driving the vehicle was arrested and taken into custody for interrogation.
Interrogation of that first suspect led to a rapid expansion of the operation. Police subsequently extended the search to Itam and Ibaka in Mbo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom, where three more victims were rescued and three additional suspects apprehended, bringing confirmed totals to seven victims rescued and four suspects in custody.
Intelligence gathered during the operation disclosed that one of the ring’s leaders had escaped through waterways from Ibaka in Mbo to Cameroon and Gabon with some victims before the police operation began. The use of maritime routes from the Ibaka waterfront in Mbo LGA — a coastal community with direct access to the Cross River estuary and onward connections to Cameroon’s maritime border — is consistent with a trafficking corridor documented by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons across multiple previous interdiction cases in Akwa Ibom and Cross River states.
The seven victims rescued include three young women from Benin Republic: Asana Wohabu, 18; Fusina Seru, 20; and Latif Ali, 19. A fourth victim, Malike Michel, male, was rescued from Lome, Togo. The three remaining victims — Mulica Ismali, 20; Saidat Ismali, 19; and Safura Ismali, 20 — are all from Oyo State, Nigeria. The presence of victims from Benin Republic, Togo, and southwestern Nigeria in a single network operating out of Akwa Ibom illustrates the multinational recruitment reach of the syndicate. It is not uncommon in NAPTIP and police case files for West African trafficking networks to use Nigerian coastal states as consolidation and dispatch points for victims recruited across Francophone West Africa and transported through Lagos or Akwa Ibom before onward movement through maritime routes.
The four suspects currently in custody are Udeme Jacob, 20, from Mbo Local Government Area; Effiong Ekop from Ibiono Ibom Local Government Area; John Okon from Mbo, all in Akwa Ibom State; and Ndukwe Ogbonnaya from Bende Local Government Area in Abia State. The geographic spread of the suspects across two states and multiple local government areas suggests a network with distributed coordination rather than a single-location operation.
Akwa Ibom State Police Command spokesperson DSP Timfon John, briefing journalists in Uyo on Saturday, confirmed all four suspects remained in custody pending the conclusion of investigations.
“The suspects will be charged to court upon the conclusion of investigation,” she said. John added that the command was continuing efforts to locate and apprehend the fleeing ringleader and other members of the syndicate still at large.
The Ibaka waterfront area of Mbo LGA has appeared in multiple previous NAPTIP enforcement records as a point of departure for trafficking victims being moved to Cameroon and Gabon. The Cameroon-Gabon corridor is a well-documented transit and destination route in the regional trafficking economy, used for the movement of domestic workers and sexually exploited persons from West Africa into Central African countries where Nigerian trafficking networks have established reception and exploitation infrastructure. Gabon’s oil wealth and the presence of a significant migrant labor market have historically made it an attractive destination market for labor trafficking operations originating from the Niger Delta and neighboring southeast Nigerian states.
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Human trafficking in Akwa Ibom and the surrounding coastal states is driven by a combination of high youth unemployment, concentrated poverty in riverine communities, and the geographic advantage of multiple waterway access points that make maritime departure easy to execute and difficult to monitor. The state has historically recorded among the highest trafficking case rates in the South-South geopolitical zone, partly because of its position as a transit hub between the Nigerian interior and Cameroon’s maritime border.
The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons has worked with the Akwa Ibom State Police Command on a series of joint operations over the past three years targeting maritime departure points in Mbo, Eket, and Oron local government areas. Coordination between the two agencies has produced several high-profile interdictions, though enforcement officers have consistently noted that the scale of the trafficking network — and the ease with which operators use speed boats and informal waterway crossings to move victims — means that every interdicted operation represents a fraction of total activity.
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The rescued victims are being held in protective custody by the police and are expected to be transferred to NAPTIP for formal victim identification, documentation, and support services including medical screening, legal counseling, and reintegration planning. Victims from Benin Republic and Togo will be subject to a separate cross-border coordination process involving the respective countries’ agencies and the International Organization for Migration, which manages voluntary assisted repatriation for trafficking victims from West Africa through its Nigerian offices.
No charges had been formally filed against any of the four suspects in custody as of Sunday. The police command confirmed investigations remained ongoing and that prosecution proceedings would commence upon their completion.
