The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Amb. Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, disclosed this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.

Odumegwu-Ojukwu spoke against backdrop of her visit to the Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO) in Accra, Ghana, where the victims of trafficking were detained.

She also restated Federal Government commitment to providing the youths with technical education and skills to curb growing unemployment.

The visit was also on the sideline of the inauguration of the 50th anniversary of ECOWAS and the Extraordinary Session of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers on the withdrawal of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso from the group.

Odumegwu-Ojukwu lauded the Executive-Director of EOCO, Mr Bashiru Dapilah for the treatment meted to the victims.

According to her, trafficking is modern slavery, obnoxious and man’s inhumanity to man, describing it as exploitation of innocent young people, callous and inhuman.

The minister urged Nigerian youths to shun people, who may promise them irresistible job offers outside shores of the country, explaining it might just be bait to lure them into slavery.

She stated that the Nigerian High Commission in Ghana alerted her of the incident and how the victims were held under inhuman conditions by the perpetrators, before the sting operation which exposed the evil syndicate.

“Prior to their rescue, these boys had been locked up in about 25 rooms within the estate where they were used to perpetrate cybercrimes.

“At the time of their arrest, many of them being locked inside confined spaces with computers for weeks on-end without being let outside, were even unable to get their eyes to adjust to the sun when they were led outside those dark rooms.

“Some had been serially abused with visible lacerations inflicted on them by their criminal ‘don’ while one had his legs broken for not tendering all the proceeds of his cybercrime,”Odumegwu-Ojukwu said.

She urged the trafficked victims to consider themselves lucky to be rescued, saying that many had lost their lives in similar circumstances, while others rot in jails across the world.

She, therefore, urged the victims to take advantage of this second chance that God had made possible for them by keying into some of the intervention programmes of the Federal Government.

She quoted Dapilah to have explained how his team acted on intelligence to achieve the feat adding, “We are not looking at this as a Nigerian crime because you have some backing of Ghanaian.

“The estate where they lived, we arrested the owner and he will be prosecuted. We require collaboration between our two countries. The crime is committed here in Ghana, but we know that somebody in Nigeria was behind it.

“So, these persons have been rescued, but the next thing is for the perpetrators to be apprehended.

“As you go home, take the message to our counterpart in Nigeria that we will be needing collaboration to roundup the perpetrators,”he said.

The Ghana anti-graft boss extolled majority of Nigerians in the country, who he said were law-abiding and contributing significantly to the development of Ghana and its economy.

He also thanked the Nigerian High Commission for working closely with the agency, lauding the Chargé D’Affaires, Ambassador Dayo Adeoye for collaborating with them.

Adeoye stated that not less than 3 million Nigerians reside in Ghana and they were doing well, helping the economic development of their host country.

According to him, there should be adequate sensitisation against trafficking to tackle the menace involving Nigerians intercepted in Ghana.

He said that no fewer than 231 of them were expected to arrive Lagos on Friday April 25, and handed over to government officials. (NAN)

The Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, made this known in Abuja on Thursday at a Building and Construction Industry Forum.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the forum was organised by the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria (CORBON) and Housing Development Advocacy Network (HDAN).

Speaking on the theme “Nigeria’s Tax Reforms and the Building and Construction Industry: Implications and Opportunities”, Oyedele said the bill has many benefits, but it is being misconceived by some people.

According to him, when the bill becomes law, Value Added Tax(VAT) on real estate transactions will be exempted, thereby lowering the cost of building materials and houses.

“The bill is designed in a way to favour low income earners contrary to what is being claimed, it will also ease their burden.

“There will be no VAT on lands, sale of real estate, and rent is exempted from VAT. Some of these are areas of controversies in the past.

“There is an exemption on stamp duties for rents below N10 million a month and capital gains tax is also exempted on the sale of dwelling houses.m,” he said

Oyedele added that, in the bill, building materials production including non- metallic products are eligible for priority sector incentives to boost production.

He said reforms will be carried out on land transactions including titling and harmonisation of property taxes.

“The Tax Reforms Bill will improve the affordability of housing. It will provide relief for people who are paying rent because what this bill is going to do is to remove a lot of the tax burden.

“The essence is to make life better for everybody and improve the economic activities in the building and construction sectors, and by extension, the whole of the economy,” he said

Oyedele encouraged Nigerians to seek more understanding of the tax reforms and stop relying on social media and headlines that were misinforming them.

Speaking in the same veins, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, said the bill offers a whole relief to construction firms and contractors.

Dangiwa, represented by the Director, Public Building, Temitope Gbemi, said the ministry has fully aligned its housing policies with fiscal reforms.

He said they were also working with tax authorities to ensure that real estate and housing investments were guided by clarity, equity, and investor protection.

On his part, the CORBON Chairman, Samson Opaluwah, identified poor access to finance and multiple taxation as major drawbacks toward the expansion of the council’s potentials.

He expressed the hope that the tax reforms bill would address the challenges and more

The Executive Director of HDAN, Festus Adebayo, said the VAT exemption on lands, real estate and building materials producers was a welcomed development.

He advocated for incentives in the tax reforms bill that would attract real estate developers and investors to go into building low cost houses for low income earners.(NAN)