Speaker meets Pope Francis in Italy

Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, met with the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, on Thursday, November 23, 2017, during his work trip to Italy.

The Speaker took to his official Twitter account to announce the meeting with the Pope which took place at Saint Peters Square, Vatican, Rome.

He posted, "Today, I had the great honour of meeting His Holiness, Pope Francis. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he is well informed about happenings in Nigeria and prays for peace in the country."

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In a press statement later released by the Speaker's media team, he revealed that Pope Francis revealed to to him that he always prays for the peace of Nigeria.

He described the meeting with Pope Francis as "awesome", and said he was pleasantly surprised and delighted to know that the pontiff is well informed about the country.

Dogara's trip to Italy

Dogara is in Italy on the invitation of the President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, for an international conference on "Human Trafficking and women empowerment: The Partnership between Nigeria and Italy."

While speaking at the conference earlier on Tuesday, November 21, Dogara charged the international community to employ effective tactics to combat the scourge of human trafficking.

He said "The Mediterranean has today become the world's biggest cemetery leaving deep wounds on humanity's conscience that will over a period of time produce historical scars to serve as a testimony to the ineptitude of our generation in dealing with this problem.

"We are all involved in this crime either as perpetrators or those who are aiding and abetting human traffickers by standing aloof while they convince victims to embark on a supposed journey in search of a "better life" that has almost always ended in "bitter life" if not death.

"The partnership between our two friendly Nations must develop the needed tools to address the hopelessness that serve as motivation for the victims to want to risk to be trafficked and the greed of the traffickers."

26 Nigerians dead at sea

Dogara's tough words came in the wake of the 26 Nigerian girls and women who were allegedly sexually abused and murdered while trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe earlier in November.

The victims were buried in , Italy on Friday, November 17, after autopsies revealed there was no recent trace of physical or sexual violence. Most of the dead victims are teenagers aged 14 to 18 and two of them were pregnant.

Spanish warship, Cantabria, docked at the southern port of Salernoon Sunday, November 5, carrying 375 survivors and the dead women kept in a refrigerated section of the warship.

The bodies of the victims were recovered from two separate shipwrecks, 23 from one and three from the other, after rescue operations by Cantabria which works as part of the European Union's Sophia anti-trafficking operation.

Italian security authorities have already arrested two men in connection with the deaths.

The two men, named as Al Mabrouc Wisam Harar, from Libya, and Egyptian Mohamed Ali Al Bouzid, have been charged by investigators after they were identified by survivors as the captains of one of the boats where the victims died.