 bohlah at 07:29 AM, 10 Dec 17 (4 hrs ago)
(18664 | Hero)  (m)
Sandra
knew there was always a chance that her clients would kill her. For
three years, she was forced to work as a prostitute on the streets of
Moscow, repaying a $45,000 debt to the trafficker who brought her from
Nigeria.
“There were five of them,” she
recalls of one occasion. “They were brutal, they beat me up; they
brought out a knife and tried to stab me.” Instead, they pushed her out
of the two-story window for not submitting. Oftentimes, there were more
men — 10, 15, 20 per call. “They might even kill you if you try to
defend yourself,” she says. “That’s the reason why it is very horrible.
And in that process most Nigerian girls lose their lives, because not
every girl can withstand the pressure of 10 men.” Sandra, not her real
name, is one of tens of thousands of Nigerian women who have been
trafficked into Europe for sexual exploitation. And many of those women
come from a single city.
For decades,
Benin-City, the capital of Edo State in southern Nigeria, has been tied
to trafficking to Europe. Here, a potent mix of poverty and spiritualism
drives thousands of young women to make the dangerous journey. Along
its often unpaved, mud-ridden streets there are houses with wide gates
and high walls.
These belong to the families
with a relation who has “made it,” says Roland Nwoha, a local NGO worker
who has devoted his career to stopping the trade. “Almost every family
has a contact in Europe.” Organizations like Nwoha’s help educate
people about the risks. But he says these few stories of success
continue to be a powerful motivator in a city where so many live in
desperate conditions. And in Benin City, the push to leave comes from
every direction.
Trapped by fear
Sandra
says she was convinced to go by a man she met at church, who said he
was an assistant pastor. She says he told her he had a vision from God
that she travelled overseas, that his sister in Russia could get a job
in a hair salon. For added insurance, the man had given the items she
left behind to a traditional priest.
“We
always have had this belief that your future lies in the hand of God,”
says Nwoha. “Religious leaders, both the traditional and the Christian,
are capitalizing on this.” Like so many, Sandra feared the juju —
traditional witchcraft — as much as she trusted her friend. Her
trafficker took much more than just her passport. “My pants, my bra, the
hair from my head, the armpit and my private parts,” she says. The
items were for a juju oath, so powerful, a local priest said, that no
one dares break it.
Forlorn-looking
Nigerian ladies who are victims of human trafficking evacuated from
Bamako, Mali and facilitated by the office of Senior Special Assistant
on Diaspora on arrival at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport,
Ikeja, Lagos.
For Sandra, it
bound her to her home thousands of miles away in Benin-City, and the
assistant pastor that convinced her to go. “I saw it with my own eyes.
It’s like a danger to weak girls, especially when it has to do with
sensitive parts of your body.” She believed that her passage to Europe
would cost her no more than $2,000. She ended up owing her trafficker
$45,000. The average debt for girls trafficked from Nigeria is around
$25,000, but it can be as much as $60,000. None of them have any idea
that they will owe these extortionate amounts. The debt, and the fear of
juju, keeps them trapped.
Sea of misery
Sandra’s
journey took her through Lagos and then an onward flight to Europe. But
increasingly the trafficking trade is flowing through the lawlessness
of Libya and across the Mediterranean where, according to the UN’s
International Organization for Migration (IOM), over the past three
years there has been a 600 per cent rise in the number of potential sex
trafficking victims arriving into Italy by sea. The IOM estimates 80 per
cent are from Nigeria.
The majority are from
Benin=City. “When the Europeans started their search and rescue
operations, many people in Benin said, ‘the road has opened, once you
get on the boats you will be rescued,” says Nwoha. But just last month,
the bodies of 26 Nigerian women were recovered from the Mediterranean in
a single day, bringing this year’s total number of migrant deaths in
that sea to at least 3,000. Often, the journey ends in tragedy. More
often, the tragedy happens in Libya.
Ede’s story
Physically, 28-year-old Ede is finally free, but the pain of what she endured is still raw.
“He
used to hurt me, apart from work,” she says of the man who purchased
her. She was sold into sexual slavery in Libya as she tried to make her
way to Europe. “That is how they do there,” says Ede, “When you finish
paying your money [to your captor], if you are staying with a wicked
somebody, they will sell you to another people so you start all over
again.”
She was freed after a police raid and
eventually deported to Nigeria. Now, back in Benin City, she sits next
to 18-year-old Jennifer, who is too traumatized to talk. They are recent
rescues, kept in a safe house run by the National Agency for
Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
“Especially
they hate us, we Nigerians … they don’t even want to hear anything
concerning Nigerians,” Ede remembers. “They treated us like a slave, as
if we are nothing. So we went through a lot there.” Outside, the house
is a non-descript, high walled compound, just like the others in the
neighborhood.
Inside, the young women sit in a
dark living room, where the hum of an overhead fan, and the Nigerian
soap opera on TV are the few comforts in this temporary home as they
wait for their cases to be investigated and to be reunited with their
families.
Reducing demand
But few cases end up in court. Fewer still end in convictions.
According
the US State Department’s latest Trafficking In Persons report, last
year NAPTIP reported 654 investigations, with 23 convictions for
trafficking offenses.
“We’re prosecuting the
small fries in Nigeria,” says Julie Okah-Donli, director general of
NAPTIP. “Absolutely the number one problem is the inability of
destination countries to clamp down on their own criminal networks.
“We’ve looked at the root causes in Nigeria without addressing the root causes in the destination countries,” she says.
“What
is being done to reduce the demand for this crime?” Sandra’s case is
one of the rare prosecutions. Her trafficker was arrested, as was his
sister, who was Sandra’s “madam” in Russia, pimping her out to clients.
They are both awaiting trial.
“When I was in
Russia I said to myself, if I get back to Nigeria alive I will expose
her,” says Sandra. “She is not going to go unpunished. The wicked don’t
have any place here; they have to face the law.” Her former church
admits her trafficker was a member of the congregation but denies that
he was an assistant pastor.
Pastor Etinosa
Osiomwanhi interacts with his congregation during a Sunday service. He
denies that Sandra’s trafficker was an assistant pastor at his church.
“You know pastors do certain things,” he said. “I don’t call them
pastors.
I call them herbalists or native
doctors in suits who would do such.” The betrayal that stretched across
two continents is now even closer to Sandra. “Even my own father said I
am not his daughter,” she says. The trafficking is not Nigeria’s problem
to solve alone, says Okah-Donli, but it is Nigeria’s tragedy.
“It’s
our young boys and girls who are trafficked. Many are not making it
back alive and the ones that do are battered and bruised.”
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