Nigerian women describe deception, debt and fear in sex trafficking networks

Nigerian women and girls are being tricked or forced into prostitution along West African migration routes, with traffickers using false job offers, imposed debts and fear of traditional curses to keep victims under control, according to an AFP report.

Blessing, who was 16, said she believed she was leaving Nigeria to work in a mobile phone shop in Mali so she could save money for university. She said she and other women realised near the Mali-Guinea border that they had been deceived and were being taken into prostitution.

Blessing said a Nigerian woman running the brothel, known as "Mommy Love," demanded 1.5 million CFA, about $2,600, for her freedom. When Blessing refused to sell sex, she said she was denied food and water for three days until she gave in. She said some clients paid less than $4 and that the women also had to pay for food and water. She later escaped with four other women.

Other women who escaped with her, including Sofia, Rose and Esther, said they had also left Nigeria after being promised ordinary jobs. Sofia, 22, said she repeatedly asked what type of work she would do but was misled until she learned the truth while travelling through Burkina Faso. Rose, 19, said she would reject anyone who tried to promise her work abroad again.

Prosper Michael, director of the Nigerian nonprofit Global Anti-Human Trafficking Organization, said Nigerian women are vulnerable to traffickers. AFP cited IMF figures saying more than six in 10 people in Nigeria live in poverty. The report says that number has risen despite reforms under President Bola Tinubu that economists have praised but that have also led in the short term to a sharp rise in inflation.

The report cites the UN as saying Nigeria leads Africa in human trafficking, including non-sexual forced or exploited labour, and that 83 percent of victims, possibly up to one million people a year, are women and girls. Experts told AFP the figure is probably an underestimate because it depends on testimony from people who escape and are willing to speak. Many victims are trafficked inside Nigeria, while others are taken to countries including Senegal, Mali and Ivory Coast, where prostitution is legal.

The International Organization for Migration said there has been a resurgence of the West Atlantic or West African-Atlantic trafficking route toward Europe since 2023. The UN agency has helped return about 67,000 human trafficking victims to Nigeria since 2017.

Blessing said she planned to explain everything to her parents and hoped the man who first connected her to the traffickers might be arrested. AFP reported that the odds are against her, citing a US slavery report that said only 32 people were convicted in Nigeria last year for sex trafficking women.

The report also describes the use of "juju" oaths in trafficking networks, especially in and around Benin City in Edo state. Some victims said women are made to swear silence before traditional priests, who take intimate personal items and threaten spiritual punishment if they run away or speak out.

Patience, from Benin City, said she was sent to Burkina Faso by her mother at age 13 and forced into prostitution. The report says many people in Benin City are out of work, leaving them vulnerable to long-established trafficking networks that use local beliefs and traditions to control victims.

Roland Nwoha of the NGO IRARA, which helps trafficking victims, said the networks have roots going back decades, when Nigerian women from Edo state travelled to Italy in the 1970s to work in textiles and some later turned to prostitution after the work ended. He said the money made abroad helped some families out of poverty and became locally accepted, but also helped create criminal networks that grew more exploitative.

Precious said she worked in prostitution in France for two years and had paid only half of a 30,000-euro debt demanded by her madame before she fled. She said her family was disappointed when she returned to Nigeria because she could no longer send money home. Nwoha said many families reject returning victims because they can no longer contribute financially.

Patience later spent 10 years in Italy and Germany and had a daughter before returning to Nigeria through a voluntary repatriation programme. She said neighbours called her daughter a witch, but she now sells clothes and wants to be a role model for her child.

European countries have tightened immigration policies since the 2010s and have worked with the IOM and local NGOs on voluntary returns. Nigerian and Edo state authorities have also run awareness campaigns, but AFP reports that trafficking networks remain entrenched.

Sandra, 38, who spent years in Italy and Germany before returning to Nigeria, said she worries about her 16-year-old daughter, the same age Sandra was when she left Nigeria. She said people trying to recruit young women try to "brainwash" them, but added that she would return to Europe if there were a legal way to do so. Another young woman, Knowledge, 18, said recruiters are everywhere in Benin City, though she hopes to reach Europe through a school scholarship.