National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) says no fewer than 368 persons have been imprisoned for trafficking offences from inception of the agency in 2004 till date.

Its Director-General, Julie Okah-Donle, said this at the organisation’s meeting with Police Liaison Officers of various Embassies in Nigeria on Thursday in Abuja.

Okah-Donle said the meeting was convened to share information and intelligence on how victims can be rescued, increase the number of arrest of traffickers, prosecute the criminals and have them jailed.

She said the agency had convicted 52 traffickers from the commencement of the collaborative meetings with the embassies from December last year to date.

According to her, the main thrust of the interactive meeting is to see how the countries can further cooperate to better combat the issues of human trafficking been a global problem.

“There has been remarkable improvement on the number of arrest and prosecution between December last year and date since we commenced this partnership. At least 52 convictions have been made.

“So the essence of the meeting is for us to reassess our activities within the past one year and really bench mark our progress where we believe we can better improve in our coordination activities.

She spoke through Director, Legal and Prosecution Department, Opotu Abdulraheem, said it had been partnership in progress because they have been cooperating, a lot of embassies have referred number of cases to them.

Head of Intelligence and International Cooperation Unit of the agency, Angela Agbayekhai, specifically identified area of collaboration with the embassies as intelligence.

She described the fight against human trafficking as clandestine, saying it is a huge challenge.

According to her, it is not just happening in one country, for every crime that is carried out there is always another party in other destination countries, hence the collaboration.