And despite the efforts of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, the Nigerian Immigration Services, NIS and other security agencies in Nigeria, the trafficking of teenage girls to foreign lands and turning them to sex slaves has continued unabated.
Young impressionable girls, often times, below the age of 18 continue to fall victims to the activities of human traffickers who devise all sorts of means including promises of mouth-watering job offers in foreign lands to lure Nigerians girls into forced prostitution, not only in Europe and America but also in other African countries.
Last week a video went viral across TikTok of a young Nigerian lady pleading with the Nigerians and the government to help them in Mali.
She showed a picture of some makeshift squalid shanties in a forested area where they were quartered by their’master’ while scores of men came to have sex with them against their wishes.
She showed a picture of a pregnant lady who was already mentally destabilized due to long months of abuse and hardship, appealing for help to save the woman.
The woman in the video said they were not only forced into prostitution, but their lives were also at risk because criminals could break into the place and kill them at will.
Describing the place they live, he said: “This is the place we crossed borders to stay in Mali. Look where we are. This place is a forest, there is no house around except these shanties.
You can’t find nobody round here they didn’t dump here. Our lives are in equal danger. “They can come in here and kill anybody and get away with it.
“Any lady or girl who comes back to Nigeria from these African countries with money and tells you she is into business is lying. It’s a big, fat lie.
“Our girls are being used by these boys and big ‘madams’ to make millions and build mansions in Nigeria. They are taking our girls to these African countries to make millions of Naira for them.
“When you get to this place, they will force you into prostitution and you have to offset the expenses they claim they spent to bring you over there, which is between N5 million and above before you can get your freedom.”
She shared the picture of a deranged pregnant young girl whom she alleged had paid her madam over N2.5million and is already stranded in Mali.
“She has no way to return to Nigeria again and she is still hustling with her pregnancy. She has given her madam millions of pounds. No one knows where her madam is.
“She has vanished with the money. Now the lady is stranded and out of her mind.
“This where they bring girls so that you can’t run away because this is like the middle of a thick forest. They are still bringing more girls as I’m making this video. They settle the Immigration officer at the border.
“They will deceive the girls to lie to the immigration officers that they are going to do legitimate work, meanwhile they have another thing in their mind which they will only reveal when you land in the country. “Let our government do something,” she said.
She said on how they were taken to the place: “They will cook beautiful stories and paint beautiful pictures of life over here. This isn’t what they told us we were coming to do.
“They told me that somebody like me, I was coming to do gold work. Others were told they were going to house-help work. But when they get here they will give you bags of condoms and before you finish paying your debt you will have exhausted two Ghana-Must-Go bags of condoms.
“Our Nigerian men and women who are into this human trafficking business are very wicked. See where we stay. What we see here is not what they say. They bring us here and make us fuck. “We need help here,” she said.
“We need help here. She called on President Bola Tinubu to assist in bringing them back to Nigeria. We are wasting our lives in Mali. The government should do something about our borders where all these girls are taken out of Nigeria almost on a weekly basis.”
But even as Nigerians struggled to come to terms with the sordid video, a chilling account emerged of how the girls rescued from Cote d’Ivoire last week were being forced to sleep with at least 11 men each on a daily basis.
Last week in Lagos, five young girls rescued from a human trafficking network in Cote d’Ivoire narrated their harrowing experiences to journalists.
The victims, speaking after their rescue and repatriation to Nigeria, said the traffickers had lured them with fake job offers in baking, hairdressing, sales of clothes and other menial jobs, only to force them into prostitution on arrival in the West African country.
One of the victims, 17-year-old Benue girl, Monica Emmanuel, said she was introduced to a woman identified as Peace, who promised to get her a baking job in Abuja. She said she and two other girls were taken from Kaduna to Lagos where another woman, one Blessing, told them that the supposed job was in Côte d’Ivoire.
Monica said they were taken through several villages and remote bush paths before they finally arrived at their destination. And only then did they realise they had fallen into the hands of human traffickers.
‘They put us in a room and told us not to tell our parents or the police. “They would make us tell our families that we were okay when they called,” she said.
The captors became more aggressive after one of the girls in their group reported the traffickers to the police in Lagos, she said, confiscating their phones and threatening to sell them to other traffickers if they refused to follow their instructions.
“They were forced into prostitution where they sometimes service between 10 and 11 men a day and all the money generated was collected by their handlers,” she said.
“We even bought condoms with our own money. We had to take out all we earned for things like food, slippers and clothing. “We were never allowed to have any money” she lamented.
Another girl from Kaduna, Juliet Timothy, 18, said she had done hairdressing training before accepting what she thought was a real job offer in Abuja.
My parents thought I was going to work in Abuja. “We didn’t know the truth until we reached Lagos,” she said.
“When we arrived in Côte d’Ivoire, the traffickers told us to act as if everything was normal when we spoke to our families,” Juliet said.
I started crying when I talked with my mom. “They took my phone straight away and told me to make a video and smile so my family could see that I was fine,” she said.
She further revealed that the traffickers demanded millions of Naira before they could be released, and threatened to sell them if they refused to continue in prostitution.
Monica and Juliet, desperate to end their nightmare, secretly contacted sympathetic Nigerians and officials, who sent them to a human rights office in Côte d’Ivoire.
Finally, their rescue was achieved through a coordinated intervention that was initiated after the Lagos Zonal Command of NAPTIP reached out to the founder of the Global Anti-Human Trafficking Organisation (GAHTO), Prosper K. Michael, for assistance.
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The operation in Côte d’Ivoire was led by Oluwaseun Odusanya, GAHTO’s representative in the country, with support from Baro Séri of the Sous-Préfecture de Djiboroso, Commune de Kani, in the Worodougou Region.
The officials secured the victims before handing them to Kouadio N’Guessan, Educateur Specialisé and Director of the Centre Social de Tengrela in the Bagoué Region of Côte d’Ivoire.
He then helped them to return safely to Nigeria, as Odusanya is also Chairman of the Nigerian Community in the Bagoué Region.
In the same vein, the other three victims, Rejoice Emmanuel, 25; Joy Teseh, 24 and Monica Tamah, 38, all from Benue State, also shared similar experiences.
They described being enticed with promises of work, such as selling clothes, but instead being compelled into prostitution for periods of three to six months.
The three women were rescued in Boundiali, also in Côte d’Ivoire’s Bagoué Region, through another coordinated operation between GAHTO and local authorities before being processed for repatriation to Nigeria.
One victim said she catered to as many as 10 clients on busy market days, while another said she earned millions of CFA francs for her traffickers but was not allowed to keep any of the money.
I got tired. “I asked the police to help because I didn’t want to go on anymore,” one of the victims said.
Another victim, a 38-year-old mother of five, appealed to the Nigerian government to help her rebuild her life through a legitimate business after she returned home.
Survivors urged authorities to step up the fight against human trafficking syndicates operating in Nigeria and neighboring West African countries.
“They also cautioned the youths to be wary of attractive job offers that promise immediate employment outside their states of residence or abroad.”
The testimonies reveal the continued activities of trafficking syndicates that continue to victimize vulnerable Nigerians through deception, coercion and sexual exploitation, despite sustained efforts by law enforcement agencies and civil society organizations to curb the crime.
Apart from the ongoing economic crisis in the country, experts believe the activities of some corrupt security agencies are also helping the menace.
As the lady in Mali suggested they also want the government to shine a close searchlight on the security personnel at borders.
Osita Osemene, a migration expert, said if there are jobs in Nigeria, many young girls and boys would resist being lured with job offers abroad.
But when they are ready to work and there is no job for them in the country, they would jump at job offers outside Nigeria without thinking twice,” he told.
He urged the government to fix the country’s economy, noting that that was the only way to stop Nigerians from moving in droves not only to Europe and America but to even smaller African countries in search of better life, as well as securing the lives and property of citizenry.
“The fact is that a good number of them were duped. Well, you could say it was easy to fool them because things are not good in the country, but let us keep in mind that they were not given the true picture of the situation over there and that is always the situation.
“They don’t tell you the truth because if they tell you the truth, you may not want to go and these are traffickers who live off these migrants.
“So, I think our leaders just need to fix this country and all this nonsense will just stop naturally.
“Meanwhile, the government should also be aware of the activities of the personnel at our borders. They should do their work properly.
“If they do their job the way it ought to be, these traffickers won’t have any escape route but because they are heavily compromised, it becomes very easy for these traffickers to cross the borders with these young girls often,” he said.