ILO Country Office, Abuja together with the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity organized a 3 day Training of Trainers (TOT) workshop for labour officers at Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja – Lagos. The workshop aimed to build capacities of Labour Officers and Inspectors to enable them identify forced labour, human trafficking and smuggling activities and what appropriate actions to take.

When capacities are built, it would lead to improvement of good recruitment practices, means of disseminating labour market information about domestic employment opportunities and jobs available abroad; and consequently reduced incidences of trafficking, smuggling in persons and forced labour. The capacity building was necessary in view of the fact that in the course of performing the statutory duties of routine labour inspections of workplaces, Labour Officers / Inspectors sometimes come in contact with traffickers and their victims and more often than not they are unable to identify them. The workshop was appreciated by the labour officers who said that this is the first time in very long while that they have had their capacities enhanced in a technical field. It is expected that these trained trainers will be the resource persons during the step down trainings to be held later for labour officers. The European Union funded project ‘Enhancing the Cooperation to fight Trafficking in Human Beings from Nigeria to Europe (ECTIP)’ supported the training