Benin City, Nigeria, Nigeria
A Nigerian high chief was arrested for allegedly sending a young woman abroad without her consent for purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. The girl was being sent to Italy, but was currently trapped in Libya. The chief claims it was actually a sister who requested him to recruit the girl to work in her beer parlor in Italy, but the sister denies this. The family has been able to speak briefly to the girl by phone, but she did not seem free to talk, answering only yes or no, and her captor is demanding 500 Euros for her freedom. At other times Libyan officials have claimed that the sea through which the girl must travel to Italy is not yet safe. The trafficker calls itself a “sponsor” and lures young people with the offer of living abroad. Their lure has captured virtually every family in the Edo State, but most are unaware their children have been trafficked, knowing only that they are “living abroad”. The two most common destination countries are Spain and Italy. Victims also pass through an intermediary country—Libya for Italy and Morocco for Spain. They normally spend months in that transit country, and many of them die there. While there, they are taken to a juju (voodoo) priest, who performs rituals to ensure that they never reveal the secrets of the trafficking trade. They are wrapped in a wrapper that has been removed from a corpse, and are sometimes made to drink water from a dead body, while swearing to different gods. One of the juju priests admitted that there are three major oaths they administer to the girls being trafficked : One is ,if she gets to that place, she should not run away with any body they ask her to stay with. The other one is; if she gets there, she should not arrest her sponsor with the police. And the third is: any thing she knows that can kill her sponsor without alerting her, she will be punished too. And at the end of the day, if she does not violate any of the oaths, she will get whatever she wants in her life. These are the claims made by the juju priests. The traffickers are believed to have residency permits in Europe, and use people in Nigeria as their messengers. Those who are sent to Libya become sex slaves of the security guards tending them. More information: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2009/09/18/benin-herbalistschiefs-caught-for-human-trafficking/
Documented on the original SlaveryMap (2008–2016). Use “Report a problem” below to add a source or flag an issue.