- I was sold and resold into sex slavery in Libya
- I lost my womb sleeping with men as a sex slave, another says
Both their stories are pathetic; sorrowful if you like – the sort you would not wish on your worst enemy. But both depict or provide sneak previews of the possible horror that lay in wait for young girls/women who dare to embark on the increasingly infamous journey into the unknown, all in the name of ‘search for better life,’ or who fall into the bait of human traffickers/sex enslavers who masquerade as economic liberators. Gboyega Alaka reports
I was sold and resold and forced to sleep with a dozen men daily in Libya – 18-year-old Eugenia
Eugenia (surname withheld to protect her identity), from Auchi, Edo State, was a mere 15-year old when she was misled into a journey that turned out to be the biggest horror any girl her age could ever face.
According to the teenage girl, who is now back in Nigeria, it was in her final year and she was preparing to sit for her school certificate examination. She had studied hard and prepared dutifully, attending tutorial classes, with the hope of swinging it in one sitting. However, there was a snag. Her father, a bus driver, was having tough time financially and money was scarce at home. In fact, there was barely enough to feed. As such, he could not raise the fee to enroll her.
Consequently, her step-mother suggested that she went to join a relative – her step-mother’s sister, Gift Osayende, in Germany and try to make a better life. Her father fell for the idea; as a young, girl, she also literally lapped it up. In fact, she felt really excited and looked forward to ‘traveling abroad’.
“I left Nigeria on August 4, 2017, at 15. I was supposed to leave for Germany through Libya, but first, they took me to swear an oath at a juju place. We were three; me and two other girls. We were to pay 30,000 Euros back to our sponsors. But they never for once told me they were luring me into prostitution work,” she said in a voice laden with sadness and regret.
“Our journey started at Big Joe Park, Akpakpava Road, Benin City en route Kano. On our way, we met some boys who were also traveling out of the country. From Kano, we were given fake passports to cross the border into Niger Republic. We were 27 in number that were loaded into a bus headed for Agadez in Niger. We had to lap each other. We left Niger border by 6pm and got to Agadez by 7am. We spent four horrific days in Agadez – it was tough getting water to drink, not to talk of bath. Food was also scarce. Finally, the Hilux vehicle that was to take us through the Sahara Desert arrived and we started on our next phase of travel to Libya. At a point, I was running out of water and feeling very weak. Eventually, I passed out but was revived. Not long after that, we were chased by robbers, who shot sporadically at our vehicle. A stray bullet hit and killed one of us, a nursing mother and the baby was handed over to the driver.
“Finally, we got to a village in the desert. It was at night and we were desperate for water. We found a well and we gladly drank, cooked and bathed with the water. But in the morning, we saw five dead bodies in the well. We were horrified but there was nothing we could do.”
Harvest of death
“The following day, we continued on our journey, but something terrible happened. 15 of the 27 passengers in the Hilux fell off and died. The stick they were all holding unto as they sat on the edge of the Hilux became weak and unexpectedly broke. The sad part was that we could not even bury them. We just left them there to rot.
“A week after we left Agadez, we arrived Gatron in Libya. We had spent seven unforgettable days in the desert. But if I thought I had been through hell, it was child’s play compared to the horror I was going to be shoved into.”
On arrival, different burgers – that’s what they called the men/women who came to receive the travelers, came to pick them. Eugenia’s burger was a Nigerian Yoruba man simply addressed as Rasheed. Rasheed ran a ghetto, where he kept people, his slaves – as Eugenia was to eventually find out. That first day, they were fed well, she recalled. But that was where it ended.
“The next day, they told us to call our people in Nigeria to send us money, as they could not continue feeding us for free. Of course there was nobody to send me money. Even the lady that was supposed to be taking me to Germany was nowhere to be found. And then they started baring their fangs. Rasheed came and took us all girls to work as prostitutes in his connection house – that’s what they call their brothels – and collected money for the services we rendered. Sometimes, he also slept with the girls. We did ‘short-time’ another word for quick sex or day-break, which means we slept over.”
Raped, deflowered
“As a 15-year-old, I was a virgin, innocent of sex, but Rasheed himself deflowered me, seeing that I was timid and proving stubborn. He called four hefty boys to hold and spread me out and forcefully penetrated me. That way, I had nothing to protect anymore. Then he launched me into the business. I had no choice. Besides, there was no room for stubbornness, as I was not given food any day I did not work or deliberately withdrew my service. They never provided us with clothes, condoms or even toiletries.
“It was my first customer, Bright, who bought me condoms, tissue and stuff when I explained my situation and fears to him. He even gave me money for medicine and clothes to look good. Even then, most of the clients refused to use condoms, so we devised a way of using baby wipes to protect ourselves by rolling like 15 pieces into a bunch and inserting it into out body. That way, their fluid didn’t get into our bodies. When they were done, we would pull it out and dispose.
For the guys, especially those who couldn’t get people to send them money from Nigeria, Eugenia submits that she could not tell who suffered a worse fate between them and the girls who were forced into prostitution, as she said they were locked in a kind of cell called tranke and severely beaten on a daily basis.
“I was in Rasheed’s ghetto for about three months; and then he started getting irritated and complaining that he was tired of me eating his food for free. That was in spite of the fact that he was collecting money on my head for sex rendered to his clients. He claimed the woman who contracted him to ferry me did not pay him the agreed money and swore to recoup his money back. So he sold me off to one Mr. John, an Edo State indigene from an Esan for 5,000dinar.
“At Mr. John’s place, I met six other girls who told me to calm down, that there was no escape for me. They advised me to just work the money and free myself. The hard part however was that I was expected to pay back four times the money he paid on me. It was a hectic and horrifying experience for me. Some days, I did as many as a dozen men in one day – 10 sharp-sharp (quickies) customers; in between, I could be contracted to go out and service a short-time client; and then come back to wash up and proceed to sleep over at another client’s.”
Horror!
“I had lots of horrific and nasty experience while working for Mr John. In fact, Mr. John himself was one of my biggest problems. Some days, he would just come to the connection center and pick me up on the pretext of going for an outside job, whereas he was actually taking me to his place, where he would have sex with me anyhow with a gun by his side. I also got beaten up on several occasions. In fact there was a time I joined some girls to try to run away; when they caught us, they took us to one connection house run by one very dangerous Yoruba man called Soponna. Words were rife that that was where they took any girl who tried to be stubborn or run away, as he had a way of teaching them bitter lessons. So when they took me to Soponna’s place, the girls, about 30 of them, gave me general beating. It was the sort of beating you have to experience to fathom. After the beating, Soponna then told four girls to hold and spread me out face up. He then proceeded to give me 12 strokes of the cane right on my private part. It was a most painful experience.
“I worked for Mr. John for a year and six months before I gained my freedom. Because it was a job I hated, I only worked a bit to raise money to start a food business of my own. I was happy and feeling contented, but tragedy struck again.”
Resold!
“Things went well for about three months, as tried to settle in and enjoy my new-found freedom, until I was set-up and kidnapped. It was the taxi man that was taking me to buy foodstuff who sold me out to those who kidnapped me. While in the kidnappers’ den, I was raped repeatedly, beaten and tortured. And then I was resold and I had to start afresh the vicious cycle.
“The owner of the place where I was sold was one Madam Mary James. She took me to Gatron, my first stop when I landed in Libya. She said clients paid more there than Sabah where we were. In truth, I was able to pay back her money after two months.
“After that experience, I just wanted to relocate back to Nigeria, as it was clear to me that I was neither safe nor was my freedom guaranteed in that country. I learnt there was a way I could come back to Nigeria through the same desert route that I came. So I started saving money – I needed about 700,000 in naira to pay my way back. While I was working that money, I encountered a boy, Chibuike, who was so nice to us girls and soon became very popular among the girls. It was with him that I saved the money I planned to travel with. Unfortunately the other guys became jealous and plotted against him. They got a Niger Republic boy to start trouble with him and in the process, stabbed and killed him. More painful for me was the fact that nobody knew where he kept my money. The police moved in and tried to make arrests, so we bolted. In my bid to escape, me and another girl, Grace, ran into the desert. On one occasion, while they were chasing us, we ran in different directions and that was the last I saw or heard of her. I cannot tell if she is still alive or dead. While in the desert, anytime I heard a vehicle coming, I would bury myself with sand to avoid being spotted. I was in the desert for two weeks. One day, I saw a Hilux coming from Nigeria, I explained my situation to them and they gave me a lift back to Libya. There, I met a lady, Anabel, who took me to her connection centre. It was there I heard that voluntary returnees were registering for a free flight through IOM -International Organisation for Migration. I enrolled and three months after, I was flown along with others back to Nigeria.
Worse than hell
“To say that I saw hell in those three years is an understatement. What I experienced was worse than hell. Yes I blame my dad for falling for the temptation to send his 15-year-old on such a trip, but it was in ignorance. I will be 19 on March 17 this year. On my return, I told him everything I went through but there was nothing he could do.
“I’m trying to put all behind me now. I now run a boutique in Auchi, courtesy of the money IOM supported me with. Special thanks to Mr. Osita Osemene and his team for the training for returnees in Lagos. The good thing is that I never got addicted to sex. I have a boyfriend now, who says he actually loves me because I have experienced the hard side of life and therefore exposed.
Word for intending travellers?
“Yes, I try to alert people of this danger but I find that rather than heed my warning, what they do is stigmatise me. So, I’ve learnt to keep to myself – except when highly necessary.”
I lost my womb working as a sex slave in Senegal
The circumstances that led to Saadat embarking on the trip to Senegal were not much different from that of Eugenia. She had finished training as a hairdresser at 22 and needed money to procure equipment to establish. Whilst she was lamenting and making contacts, she spoke to her friend, Sube, a fellow indigene of Auchi but who was in Senegal and purportedly doing well. Following series of chats on whatsapp, she linked her with her madam, who painted a beautiful picture of how she could make good money making hair in that country.
In not time, she began making preparations to travel to Senegal.
“The madam, Madam Blessing, made all arrangements and paid for my transportation. We travelled by bus and then bike through thick forest. Practically, I would say it was my friend who recruited me for this business, because she deliberately lied to me about the nature of the work she was doing. From Lagos, we boarded a bus to Cotonou; from there we boarded another to Mali, and then Senegal.
“The first sign that it wasn’t going to be altogether a rosy trip was in Cotonou, where my guide, Oga Chucks tried to force himself on me, but I reached out to the madam and she issued him a strict warning to steer clear of me. Thereafter, there were no incidences until we got to Senegal.
“Funny enough, when we arrived our destination, I didn’t even know we had reached our destination. It was a fearful whole day bike ride through the forest. The bike man took me from Bamako in Mali to Senegal. I was so scared all through the ride, but I hardly uttered a word because the man had horror written all over his face. Even when I summoned the courage to say anything, he never responded. I was careful not to annoy him because if he decided to kill me there, there was nobody in sight to challenge him. Finally, we got to a place called Kimba. There, a woman came to meet me and introduced herself as Madam Blessing. She said she was the one I was coming to meet. My first shock was that the place was a little less that a village. It was a place where they mine gold and the houses were made of nylon (wrapped around planks). We were quite a number there, including a girl called Berebere and the stupid girl that lured me there.
“Surprised at the whole scenery, I kept asking, ‘Is this where we’re coming?’ But I got no concrete answer. I told my friend who linked me that I couldn’t stay in a place like that because my body was not conditioned for that kind of cold, but she told me that was where we would stay. Deliberately, they left me to rest for two days, seeing that the trip was a rough one. It was after that that Madam Blessing told me to make her hair, and that kind of put my mind at rest. When I finished, she said I did well; this also raised my hope a bit, as I thought she had a shop where she was going to keep me. It wasn’t however long before she burst my little bubble. She told me in clear terms that hairdressing was not the work I came there to do and that I was there to do prostitution work. My friend then told me that I had no choice but to comply. She said I however had a chance of regaining my freedom after doing the work for a while. I asked why she didn’t tell me this before, but she gave me no answer. Eventually, I complied and joined in the trade when I saw no way out.”
Speaking of her experience on the job, Saadat said it was not something she wished to remember.
“I slept with over twenty men on a daily basis. My first day was especially scary, as my first customer released blood. I was lucky he used a condom otherwise he would have released whatever disease he was coming with into my body. I freaked out and told my colleagues that I couldn’t continue, because I couldn’t fathom how a man could release blood. But they prevailed on me, citing the fact that I was trapped. When I eventually continued, I have no word to describe it. Sometimes, I slept with 30 men! They paid 2000 cepher per short time.”
Asked if she had a daily target, Saadat said, “No, but it depends on your capacity. If you can sleep with 100 men per day, so be it – in fact, the better, as it would help you reach your target payback to the madam and regain your freedom. I was expected to pay back 1.650million cepher before I regained my freedom. So, I usually gave all the money I made to my madam, out of which she would remove 1,000 cepher for my house rent and 2,000 for my feeding. This is outside the money for bath water and other stuffs.
“Sometimes, we went to provide daybreak service to clients and they paid 10,000 cepher. So there were days I made as much as 50,000 cepher. Sometimes, clients would dash you extra money but rather than keep it to yourself, you want to just pay it out to your madam, so that you can reach your target and get your freedom. She said the money was charges for my transportation to Senegal and her pay.
“Yes I was not a virgin when I travelled because I already had a boyfriend but I was not in any way prepared for what I faced in that country. The luck I had was that the men were using condom.
“In the course of the work, I struck a friendship with a girl, who took pity on me, seeing that I was suffering a lot due to the rigours of the work. Some of the men’s penis was monstrous and touching my womb, to the extent that I started feeling pains inside. But I dared not stop. At a point, I had a nagging chest pain; so my new friend linked me with a boy. She told him I was new in the business and he should assist me in whatever way he could. So the boy started giving me money, which I remitted to my madam, while I took days off to rest. He had lots of money because he worked in the gold mine nearby. But I would leave home to make out that I was going to work. Mind, you, he was not my boyfriend and we had no emotional attachment. It wasn’t even possible for you to have a boyfriend while doing that job. But he did sleep with me once, the first day he met me.”
Losing her womb
“I did the sex slave work for three or four months…. But I kept praying to God for a way out. I was sleeping with too many men than my body could take.”
At this point, Saadat got really emotional and started crying.
“It got to a point the pain became really unbearable. I could not sit well and kept having this nagging pain inside my stomach. I could not do anything with my body and if anyone touched me, it was as if they were pricking me with a needle. I took drugs but it did not go away. Yet, I still had to do the job except on days my benefactor gave me money. Even if I wanted to take days off, my madam had friends there, who kept watch over us. At about the time my womb fell, my benefactor was out of town. I didn’t even know it was my womb that had fallen. I guess it was when I continued with the job in spite of the pain that it finally fell out of place. It was one of the girls who told me to go into the bathroom and insert my hand into my vagina, and that if I felt something shaking, then I should know that it’s my womb that had fallen.”
Asked how many men she might have slept with during her enslavement, Saadat said, “No, that will be difficult. But like I said, I slept with twenty men per day on the average. However, on few occasions when business was down, I may have like three clients. On such occasions, my madam would be visibly annoyed and raving. She would tell us to go after the men if they didn’t come after us.”
On a few occasions, Saadat got fed up and tried to revolt, even run away, but the other girls discouraged her, warning her of the grave consequences.
Her lucky escape
“While I was sick, my madam became really impatient and started harassing me on why I wasn’t working and remitting money. I told her I was not well and that the spot where I was operated upon for appendicitis was paining me. But rather than allow me rest, she ordered that I be given ammoxil, saying that it would calm me down. That singular act of hers angered the other girls, as they began asking if she wanted me to die.
“However, that was turning point for me, as I made up my mind to find my way back home, come what may. I borrowed the phone of my benefactor and called my mom to intimate her on what I was going through. I also called my boyfriend in Nigeria and we devised a plan to nail her. He told me to collect my madam’s phone number, so he could start chatting with her up, as if he was in love with her. By that time, I had saved up about 300,000 cepher with my friends, meant to be delivered to my madam. I also cried to my friends to help me raise more money if they didn’t want me to die in that village. Odufa told me that her sister knew the woman right to her home in Nigeria; it was she, who contacted her sister, who now contacted the police to arrest our madam during her visit to Nigeria at Christmas. All through the plan, we were careful not to let Sube, the girl who connected me, in, because she was always on madam’s side. The police then invited NAPTIP (the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons) officials.
“That was how we escaped and found our way back to Nigeria in February this year. We were three: Me, Odufa and Best.”
Has she been to a hospital?
Asked if she has been to a proper hospital, since arriving Nigeria, to ascertain if indeed her womb has fallen and if there is possibility of a medical solution, Saadat said, “The reason I actually haven’t been to a hospital is because I don’t want my biggest fear to be confirmed. I don’t want any doctor telling me that my womb has indeed fallen and that I would not be able to have a baby of my own.”
On whether she has received any benefit from NAPTIP, Saadat said, “Yes, they gave me N5,000 transport stipend to travel from Benin to Auchi. Only IOM (International Organisation for Migration) tried to be of help by giving us business training. So, now I am hoping to start a business of my own, possibly a boutique.”
On the possibility of her story helping younger girls and other intending travellers to take better decisions Saadat replied rather cynically, “That’s if they would listen.”
In 2018, after I produced my first feature, Time Looped, another producer called to congratulate me and I wondered what the big deal was. I had fallen out with people who ought to have been professionals, first and secondly, friends; I had worked both on screen and behind the scenes, juggling several assignments and was way too exhausted to feel any sense of achievement; I really did not consider it a big deal. She said to me, “You finished on schedule and within budget. It is a big deal that some more experienced producers have not achieved”. I said thank you and went back to sleep, but I stopped being hard on myself.
