The Chairman Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, was seen in a video that has since gone viral crying in Badagry, Lagos State with some Africans in Diaspora during the Diaspora Festival. According to the news, some Africans in diaspora came to Nigeria for the festival and when they got to the “Slave island”, also known as Land of no return, and the history of how their ancestors were treated was narrated to them, many shed tears.
Just like slave trade, if plans are not put in place to stop the issue of Nigerian girls being trafficked out of for prostitution, there are likely to be more tears to be shed in the future.
Not too long ago, the Nigerian Ambassador to Burkina Faso, Ramatu Ahmed, decried the situation in Burkina Faso, where she stated that no fewer than 10,000 Nigerian girls are forced into prostitution and many of these girls, according to her, are underage and are usually kept in appalling conditions and in mining camps across the country.
Corroborating to the statement of the Ambassador, Yetunde (not real name), who escaped from her “abductors” in Bobo-Dioulasso, a city in Burkina Faso, told a reporter of The Eagle Online in Nigeria: “We don’t live in houses. Our house is just like a mat.”
According to Yetunde, she was outrightly told that she was going to Burkina Faso for prostitution and she had no problem with that, at least initially, until after her escape. She narrated that young girls are usually accosted on their way to schools, malls, anywhere and a “proposal” of travelling outside is brought before them. She further narrated that the issue of trafficking is actually a game of luck. Some gets to go to their “preferred destination” like Dubai, Italy and Germany, while others don’t make it.
Girls trafficking and “the cabal”
Like everything in life, which has a process, so also is trafficking. From the inception where one is to move from Lagos to the supposed destination, there are stages that must be fulfilled by the “patrons”. The patrons are those who are in charge of the girls. A patron can come to Nigeria to take girls to Burkina Faso and sell to another patron for 200,000 CFA, which is the equivalent of N120,000.
The initial step, according to Yetunde, is to go to a place in Lagos, Ikeja precisely, to forge an identity card, which is called piers. This ID card will indicate that the person is a Nigerian and is a dancer or a student, which usually is not the case. It never indicates the “true nature” of the job of the holder.
And considering the importance of this identity card, many of the patrons do not hand it over to the girls. Instead, they hold it on behalf of the girls. The partnership between the patrons and the girls don’t just end with the ID cards. Some go as far as shaving the girls’ armpits and they take an oath so that the girls do not “spill the beans” and put them into trouble.
Some patrons will urge the girls to put unsanitary materials such as mattress foam or wipes in their vaginas to block menstrual blood or bleeding from abortions so that they could have sex with “customers”.
The girls “hustle” and they give the patron commission from their pay. Some remit 1.5 million CFA, which is N600,000, while some remit almost up to N1 million, depending on the agreement they reach with the patron. And when a girl gets her “supposed freedom” and tries to stay on her own, the patron makes sure that her influx of “clients” are not much. So head or tail, the patrons always wins.
Apart from giving the patrons their commission, the girls also have to pay 2000 CFA everyday for their accommodation. And to make matters worse, some of them already have two or three children. And like the rat race, they are stuck.
The patrons, according to Yetunde, are all Nigerians and some can be really cruel. Some patrons put up the girls on the street the very day they arrive. No rest. And when the girls fall sick and die, they pay 1000 CFA, which is N60, to dig a grave for burial. If the patron is the kind one, they inform the family about the fate of their daughter.
The way forward
One of the ways to nip the menace of human trafficking to the bud is government investing in education. But that is one area the government is not paying attention to as the budgetary provision for education in the 2019 budget has again fallen below the 15 per cent to 20 per cent minimum recommended for developing countries by UNESCO. Not only by investing in education, if possible there should be a curriculum re-engineering, where topics pertaining to human trafficking will be injected to enlighten the students. And parents should also try to keep small families so that they can be able to educate their wards properly.
There is the need for the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons to bring their awareness programmes and campaigns to the rural areas and they should also partner with the telecommunication industry to get help lines for anyone to call in the case of trafficking.
The government should also provide skill acquisition centres and create more jobs for the masses. It should also try to resolve security issues in the country as quickly as possible so as to reduce the number of internally displaced persons. There is also the need for proper monitoring of human activities at the border by government agencies.