A young Nigerian woman cried for help as she was unknowingly sold to a prostitution racket in Ghana. She went missing two weeks after being taken there.
Oyindamola Ola, 24, said one woman took two of them to Ghana with the promise of a good job. But the woman took her somewhere and left with her friend. She was informed a day later after the woman and her friend didn’t come back that she was sold for prostitution.
She refused and they said she had to pay N500,000 as it was the amount they paid to the woman. In other words she was sold! She said she didn’t have the money and they made her undergo some fetish rituals and took an oath, obviously to frighten her as they said she would go mad if she left without paying the amount.
It is unfortunate how our young ones, especially girls, are deceived with the promise of abundant jobs in other countries. They jump at the opportunity; some pay their benefactors upfront or are held under bondage of payment later, where almost all the money they make would be given as payment.
However, outright selling of people like in the case of Oyindamola is not common. So through this they sell their victims and vanish. If the victims protest as they must surely do the buyers or owners as it is, would demand reimbursement.
I wish they would ask that from the seller, but perhaps since they are partners in crime it is the victim that would bear the brunt and be intimidated into submission.
The buyers must surely know that the victim may hardly know that she was being sold like a common commodity in the market and into prostitution for that matter.
Women and young girls are being trafficked under the guise of education and job opportunities.
Even women with small children fall into this, believing that they would get money to look after their children.
In any case this exploitation and abuse of women is very wide indeed. Some years ago a teenage secondary school girl of about fifteen years suddenly came to talk with a gate man living in the small room at the gate. He introduced her to the residents as his wife. “This is my bride,” he said.
But the young girl from a neighbouring state bordering Abuja later said she didn’t know anything about being married to him. She said it was one woman that brought her to him and left.
She was asked about her parents but she said the woman said she would take her to work as a house girl, abandoning her education altogether. The young girl left after a few months.
Poverty makes unscrupulous people exploit those in a dire situation with false promises of jobs only to find the reverse where they may find it difficult to extricate themselves or run away.
Just last week the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons ( NAPTIP ) raised an alarm that women trafficked to Iraq as domestic servants were being exploited and sexually harassed and were requesting assistance to return home.
The Director-General of the agency Fatima Waziri-Azi said the women were trafficked to Iraq under the guise of greener pastures, and that most of them were young.
She said NAPTIP was investigating rogue labour recruiters who have been reported to be big players in the recruitment of Nigerians to Iraq for domestic servitude.
The poverty alleviation programmes of the government should do more by providing people the opportunity to really get out of poverty and not to be exploited by lies.
No matter the opportunity provided, some would however seek to go somewhere to make a living or a fortune, as such they should be cautious and not to believe all the rosy stories they hear. Some that dish out such stories may be involved in crime.
