The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) has condemned the government’s silence on the death of 26 young Nigerian girls that died at the Mediterranean.
Italy held a mass funeral on Friday for 26 young Nigerian women who drowned while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
The director of UN migration agency IOM for the Mediterranean, Federico Soda said that the girls were likely victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation.
According to the organization, government’s inability to send a single representative to the burial of the all-female victims, was a national embarrassment, local online website, the Sahara Reporters said.
“This silence is troubling and deplorable. We also see in this silence the federal government’s refusal to publicly take responsibility, considering the fact that these people apparently took this ;suicide mission’ as a means of survival in their desperate search for livelihood. “President of CDHR, Mr. Malachy Ugwummadu said.
Ugwummadu urged the government at all levels to quickly rethink their employment and welfare schemes so as to avoid a repeat of theses regrettable occurrences.
A recent IOM report had estimated that 80 percent of Nigerian girls arriving in Italy by sea might be trafficking victims.
The 26 bodies of the girls were retrieved from the sea on November 3 by a Spanish rescue ship, while some 64 people were unaccounted for and feared lost, bringing the total dead to around 90, said Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesman.
According to data released by Italian government, almost 115,000 migrants, mainly African men, have reached Italy so far this year.
IOM said at least 2,925 people died trying to cross the Mediterranean from January 1- November 5, Reuters reports.
