THE National Agency for Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and other related matters (NAPTIP) recently busted a major human trafficking syndicate in Lagos, involving a 32 year-old man, Mr Makoju Olawale Fredrick of Crystal Services.

Frederick was involved in a Canadian and Australian migration visa scam running into hundreds of millions of naira and was always in disguise of offering employment and securing visas for unsuspecting Nigerians and organising foreign travels that promote trafficking and labour exploitation and has defrauded over 8,000 Nigerians.

The Executive Secretary /CEO, Mrs Beatrice Jedy-Agba, said that the suspect still at large is the sole director of the said company, which has been recruiting people into the scam since 2010.

According to the NAPTIP boss, investigations revealed that the suspect collected N1,000 (one thousand naira only) from each applicant as application fee and N50,700 (fifty thousand seven hundred naira) as medical examination fee. He collected their passports and made each applicant swear to an affidavit to pay double the amount of money he would spend for their travel to Canada. He also made them obtain a police report on character and claimed that the trip of each person would cost him N750, 000 and that on arrival in Canada all the travel documents would remain with him until they were able to pay N1.5 Million each.

Mrs. Jedy-Agba said that NAPTIP learnt of this scam when a victim reported to its Lagos zonal office, the suspect's secretary, one Miss Aderonke Oshun, was arrested after all efforts to arrest and retrieve information about her boss failed. NAPTIP operatives however recovered eight big properly sealed cartons containing over 8,000 Nigerian International passports and other documents.

She stated that none of the passports contained Canadian visas and that calculations showed that the scammer had swindled unsuspecting Nigerians of over N560M (five hundred and sixty million naira) in the visa scam.

She pleaded with unsuspecting Nigerians to be cautious and desist from the craze to migrate to foreign lands at any cost and by any means, she said this craze fueled crimes.

She has called on well-meaning Nigerians to exercise extreme caution in patronising so-called visa and tour operators while Mr. Fred Olawale Makoju has been declared wanted.

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