Russia 2018: Traffickers Target Nigerians For Sex Slavery.

Nigeria officials and the Anti-slavery The Alternative have said that they had intelligence reports showing plans to traffic local women from Nigerian villages into Russia for the football tournament, exploiting a move by Moscow to let spectators enter the country with just a ticket and a fan pass.

They say Russia's strict visa process had typically made trafficking people into the nation time-consuming and costly and the eased visa rules had now left the system open to abuse.

Many women and girls have been lured from Nigeria in recent years with promises of work and good wages only to end up trapped in debt bondage, and the World Cup could see the number of victims arriving in Russia soar.

30 Nigerian women were brought to the Confederations Cup in Moscow last year ... we expect to face the same problem during the World Cup this year," Siluyanova told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by email.

Visa-free entry was trialled at the Confederations Cup and will apply to the entire World Cup, which runs in 11 Russian cities from June 14 to July 15, and the ten days either side.

Nigeria's anti-trafficking agency NAPTIP said it had received intelligence that human traffickers were planning to take advantage of the tournament, and that it was working with the Russian embassy in Abuja to tackle the issue.

NAPTIP could not say the exact figure of women trafficked into Russia, but added most are from Edo state.

Thousands of Nigerian women and girls are lured to Europe each year, making the treacherous sea crossing from Libya to Italy, and trafficked into sex work, the United Nations says.

The number of female Nigerians arriving in Italy by boat surged to more than 11,000 in 2016 from 1,500 in 2014, with at least four in five of them forced into prostitution, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

A spokesman for football's governing body FIFA said it was committed to ensuring human rights were respected, but that crimes such as human trafficking were the responsibility of local and international authorities.