IRIN Focus on the trafficking of women

Joyce Eghosa believed she was going to find work as a fashion designer when she teamed up with a group of other Nigerian girls to emigrate to Italy two years ago. But in January, the 20-year-old from Edo State in mid-western Nigeria was one of a group of 87 Nigerian women repatriated from Italy for lack of valid immigration documents and prostitution. In April another 25 Nigerian women were repatriated from Italy and Saudi Arabia, where they were said to have been sex workers. Nigerian police and immigration authorities confirm the existence of prostitution rings that have specialised in procuring women on the pretext of finding lucrative jobs, and taking them to Europe and other overseas destinations to work as sex slaves. “So far 149 prostitutes have been deported to Nigeria this year,” Amimbola Ojomo, an assistant inspector-general of police in charge of the issue, told reporters recently. She said Nigeria topped the list of African countries whose women were being shipped to Europe and other parts of the world for prostitution. “Between January and December 1999 more than 1,000 Nigerian girls were deported from Italy alone for prostitution and lack of valid travel papers,” Bisi Olateru-Olagbegi of the Women Consortium of Nigeria non-governmental organisation told IRIN. “And this has not stopped. Even Belgium and The Netherlands have also followed suit in deporting Nigerian girls for similar reasons,” she added. Last December, Nigerian immigration officials intercepted a group of 13 young women on the border with neighbouring Benin who said they were being taken by their sponsor to Germany through Libya to work as fashion designers and hair dressers. However, the man who they said had provided them with travel documents and was paying their passage escaped. Last October, a local weekly, ‘The News’, reported the Italian ambassador to Nigeria, Giovanni Germano, as saying that 60 percent of all sex workers in his country were Nigerians. Statistics show that more than 90 percent of those repatriated or intercepted came from Edo State in the southwest. Olateru-Olagbegi, whose organisation has embarked on a campaign against the trend, says even where the girls realised that the object of the trip was to engage in prostitution, most did not bargain for the type of bondage and abuse to which they were subjected. “The sponsors usually make them undertake secret oaths or lawyers are brought in to make agreements. They now arrange all the travel documents, give them orientation and send them into the streets,” she said. “The type of sex involved often includes bestiality - sex with dogs and monkeys, and many of them didn’t bargain for that,” she added. The amounts they owe to their sponsors, usually in the region of US $50,000, have to be paid off over years before the women can earn their freedom. The health risks are many, the highest being that of contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Officals of the Edo State government, which has also launched an enlightenment campaign to discourage the emigration of women to Europe, said seven of the 87 women sent back recently from Italy tested HIV positive. “We have seven of them looking as healthy as everybody but HIV positive,” Charles Idahosa, spokesman for Edo Governor Lucky Igbinedion, told journalists. “We can’t hold them from going back into the society because there’s no law they have broken,” he added, hinting at the wider risks to community health. Nigerian social reserchers have had difficulty explaining why Edo State accounts for most of these emigrant prostitutes. They say it may stem from the excrutiating poverty and the disintegration of family values in 15 years of corrupt military rule which ended last May. “In the face of poverty many families have lost the bond holding them together and parents no longer have control over their children,” social worker Tina Ogamba told IRIN. Olateru-Olagbegi said that, in many cases “there also appears to be a certain lack of respect for women; only the male child is respected and only they inherit property. So the women often have to fend for themselves anyhow”. Nowadays there are women popularly referred to as “Italos” in the city of Benin, capital of Edo State, who now have houses and flashy cars to show for their sojourns in Europe and are often glamourised by the poor folk, she said. Edo is not the only state affected. Police figures, according to Ojomo, show that recent deportees originated from a total of 14 out of Nigeria’s 36 states. Non-governmental organisations, police and immigration officials are collaborating with international bodies in a joint effort to stem the traffic and its consequences. The government organised a seminar last October to sensitise law enforcement agencies and take the counter measures needed. Efforts are mainly being aimed at closing the trafficking routes, generally through neighbouring countries where the women are usually fitted out with new identities and fake travel documents to facilitate their passage. Worried by the trend, Titi Abubakar, wife of Nigeria’s Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, has set up the Women-trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) to combat the traffic and help in the rehabilitation of deportees. Her organisation is building a multi-purpose centre where vocational training would be provided for returnees who would also get financial support to set up small enterprises at the end of their training. Dozens of women have already been released to WOTCLEF by the police for rehabilitation. But many social workers who have confronted the problem believe a multi-pronged effort, both nationally and transnationally, is needed to stanch the flow of women overseas for such prostitution. “To deal with the problem effectively, national efforts need to be complemented with regional cooperation and wider international efforts since its dangers also know no borders,” Ogamba said.