As seen on Premium Times Network.
We are 10 at the boot camp: Adesuwa, Isoken, Lizzy, Mairo, Adamu, Ini, Tessy, Omai, Sammy and I. We have travelled together in a 14 seater bus from Lagos, hoping to arrive in Italy soon. We are eager to get to the ‘next level’ as it is called: from local prostitution to hopefully earning big bucks abroad. But first, it turns out, we have to pass through ‘training’ in this massive secluded compound guarded by armed military men, far from any other human being, somewhere in the thick bushes outside Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos. Our trafficker, Mama Caro, welcomes us in flawless English, telling us how lucky and special we are; then she ushers us to a room where we are to sleep on the floor without any dinner.Six out of 10 people who are trafficked to the West are Nigerians. Premium Times investigative reporter, Tobore Ovuorie, was motivated by years of research into the plight of trafficked women in the country, as well as the loss of a friend, to go undercover in a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise. She emerged, bruised and beaten but thankfully alive, after witnessing orgies, big money deals in jute bags, police-supervised pickpocketing, beatings and even murder. This is her story. Continue after the break.
I had not expected this. We had exercised, through a risk analysis role play, in advance: my paper PREMIUM TIMES, and our partners on the project, a colleague–Reece Adanwenon– in the Republic of Benin, and ZAM Chronicle
in Amsterdam. We had put in place contacts, emergency phone numbers,
safe houses, emergency money accounts. We had made transport and
extraction arrangements. Ms. Reece is waiting in Cotonou, 100 kilometers
to the West in neighbouring Benin, to pick me up from an agreed meeting
place. But we hadn’t foreseen that there was to be another stop first:
this isolated, guarded camp in the middle of nowhere. It dawns on me
that we could be in big trouble.
Risk analysis and preparation
It had all started in Abuja, with
me deciding to expose the human traffic syndicates that caused the
death, through Aids, of my friend Ifuoke and countless others. As a
health journalist, I had interviewed several returnees from sex traffic
who had not only been encouraged to have unprotected sex, but who had
also been denied health care or even to return home when they fell ill.
They were now suffering from Aids, anal gonorrhea, bowel ruptures and
incontinence.
In the case of some of them, who hailed from conservative religious backgrounds, doctors in their home towns had denied them any treatment because they had been ‘bad’. I was also aware that powerful politicians and government and army officials, who outwardly professed religious purity, were servicing and protecting the traffickers.I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens. My PREMIUM TIMES colleagues had done undercover work before; they had warned me of the risks, but had agreed to support me in my decision to go through with it. With my colleagues, and with the help of ZAM Chronicle, we then started in earnest.
In the case of some of them, who hailed from conservative religious backgrounds, doctors in their home towns had denied them any treatment because they had been ‘bad’. I was also aware that powerful politicians and government and army officials, who outwardly professed religious purity, were servicing and protecting the traffickers.I wanted to break through the hypocrisy and official propaganda and show how, every day, criminals in Nigeria are helped by the powerful to enslave my fellow young citizens. My PREMIUM TIMES colleagues had done undercover work before; they had warned me of the risks, but had agreed to support me in my decision to go through with it. With my colleagues, and with the help of ZAM Chronicle, we then started in earnest.
Oghogho
I had advertised my wish to get to
know a ‘madam’ whilst walking the streets of Lagos, dressed as a call
girl.It worked. I had met Oghogho Irhiogbe, an accomplished,
well-groomed graduate in her thirties (though she claimed to be only
26), and a wealthy human trafficker of note. My lucky hunch to tell her
that my name was ‘Oghogho’ too had immediately warmed her to me. She
told me I looked like her kid sister and from then on treated me like a
favourite.
“Don’t worry about crossing
borders and getting caught,” she had told me. “Immigration, customs,
police, army and even foreign embassies are part of our network. You
only run into trouble with them if you fail to be obedient to us.” I
already knew this to be true. Two of the trafficked sex workers I had
interviewed had tried to find help at Nigerian embassies in Madrid and
Moscow, only to realise that the very embassy officials from whom they
had sought deportation had immediately informed their pimps. They had
eventually made it back to Nigeria only after they had developed visible
diseases, such as AIDS-related Kaposi sarcoma.
Oghogho Irhiogbe had been luckier.
She owned four luxury cars, two houses in Edo State, and was busy
completing the building of a third house near the Warri airport in Delta
State. Others I had met through my initial ‘call girl’ exploits were
clearly on their way to riches, too. Priye was set to go back to the
Netherlands, where she worked before, to become a ‘madam’. Ivie and
Precious were quite happy to go back to Italy. Precious had already made
enough money to start building her own house in Enugu, halfway between
Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Forza Speciale
It is on the windy Sunday evening
of October 6 that I make my first contact with the outer ring of this
mafia. A big party with VIPs is on the cards; the kind of party an
ordinary girl, or rather ‘product’, as we are called by traffickers, is
not usually invited to. But I am currently on a fortune ride: Oghogho’s
favourite. Additionally, I have been classified as ‘Special Forces’, or
‘Forza Speciale’ as my new contacts say, borrowing the Italian term.
It’s a rule of thumb, I understand, that a syndicate subjects girls to
classification through a check on their nude bodies and I, too – in the
company of some male and female judges, headed by a trafficker called
Auntie Precious – had been checked. I had received the highest
classification.
“This means that you don’t have to walk the streets. You can be an escort for important clients,” Auntie Precious had told me in a soft, congratulatory tone. The ones of ‘lesser’ classification were referred to as Forza Strada, the Road Force.
“This means that you don’t have to walk the streets. You can be an escort for important clients,” Auntie Precious had told me in a soft, congratulatory tone. The ones of ‘lesser’ classification were referred to as Forza Strada, the Road Force.
The party is held at a gorgeous
residence along the Aguiyi Ironsi Way in Maitama, Abuja. This is
designed to be a festive end to a great day, in which we went to church,
hung out at the choicest places in town, shopped and got dressed in a
suite at the Abuja power citadel, meeting point of the elite, the
Transcorp Hilton.
It is more like an orgy. Male and
female strippers entertain guests, drugs abound, alcohol is everywhere
in unrestrained flow; there is romping in the open. Also, big bags of
money are changing hands. Barely an hour after we arrive, Oghogho
receives a big jute bag, which is delivered from another room. As we
walk out and she puts the money in the boot of her car, she smiles at
me. “Don’t worry; very soon, you’ll get to receive dividend.” This
‘dividend’ is not from prostitution and trafficking alone, but Oghogho
won’t tell me what the other source is. “When you come on board fully,
you’ll know.”
A retired army colonel from the
Abacha era sees to it that we are not disturbed. “He has top connections
and sees to a smooth flow of the business,” Oghogho tells me.
Pickpocketing training
How ‘top’ these connections are, I
find when I am taken with a group of girls to be trained in
pickpocketing. We, a group of ten ‘products’, are placed at various
crowded bus stops in the suburb of Ikorodu, where we must ‘practice’
under the guard of two army officers, a policeman as well as a number of
male ‘trainers’. The policeman doesn’t even bother to cover his name
badge: Babatunde Ajala, it reads.
The general operation is
supervised by Mama Caro, popularly called Mama C, a 50-something,
light-complexioned, busty woman. Her deputy is a Madam Eno. Mama C has
told us that pickpocketing is a crucial skill for the Forza Speciale: we
will need to be able to pick valuables from clients. She adds that the
pickings are added to the girls earnings, so we will be able to pay off
our debts– commonly called ‘meeting our targets’ – in a short time.
When I perform dismally, Eno rains
abuses on me. We are all to stay at the bus stop until I pick
an item from somebody. It is already 11 PM.Tired, hungry and angry with
me, Adesuwa, Isoken and the policeman guarding my group pick some extra
pockets and hand me the items, so that I can show them to Eno.
The next day, the bumpy journey to
the ‘training camp’ appears endless. My fellow ‘products’ are snoozing
and I battle to stay awake, wondering if we are tired or drugged. I note
the bus moving off the main road somewhere around Odogunyan, into thick
bushes, almost a forest.We stop at a compound guarded by armed military
men. As my fellow ‘products’ wake up, it is clear that they think we
are still in Lagos.
New names and indenture
The next day starts with strip
tease and lap dance training after breakfast, and thereafter poise and
etiquette. Five other girls have arrived in the meantime. They are all
graduates, leaving for Italy fully aware of what they are to do there.
“If I get caught by local police, I will just tell them I was trafficked
against my will,” one of them, Gbemi, says light-heartedly. “I don’t
think oyinbo (white man) will believe Mama C if she says that I am there voluntarily.”
I receive a crash course in
pedicure and manicure because I am so bad at pickpocketing. “You’ll be
utilizing these skills at my wellness centre in Italy,” Mama C says,
after scolding me for being lazy and testing her patience. “You will be
working on only men whilst wearing sexy dresses. That will enable you to
attract customers.”
Later, Mama C makes everyone sign a
statement that they have willingly embarked on the journey and that
they are to return certain sums as professional fees to her. No girl is
given a copy of what she has signed and the amount varies inexplicably:
while Isoken signs up for a debt of US $100,000, I will have only US
$70,000 to pay. We are told that we will receive new passports with
false names and even false nationalities in Cotonou. I am to become a
Kenyan, Mairo South African, and so on. “I have boys in the Benin
immigration office,” boasts Mama C.
Horror
A just-arrived traditional
‘doctor’ then puts us through rites that involve checking the horoscope
of each girl as well as collecting some of her blood, fingernails, hair
and pubic hair. He then picks out four of us as ‘problematic’ and says
we will bring ‘bad luck’. Either he is really clairvoyant or he is a
professional security operative who has run background checks on us,
because he is right about at least three of the four. Two of us have had
unfortunate earlier experiences involving deportation back to Nigeria
and are possibly known to the authorities in Europe. I am number three.
What happens next is like a horror movie.
As we ‘unlucky’ four, are standing
aside, Mama C talks with five well-dressed, classy, influential-looking
visitors.The issue is a ‘package’ that Mama C has promised them and
that she hasn’t been able to deliver. The woman points at me, but Mama C
refuses and for unexplained reasons Adesuwa and Omai are selected. We
all witness, screaming and trying to hide in corners, as they are
grabbed and beheaded with machetes in front of us. The ‘package’ that
the visitors have come for turns out to be a collection of body parts.
The mafia that holds us is into organ traffic, too.
With
all of us trembling and crying, I and the other three ‘unsuitable’ ones
are herded into a separate room. Mama C comes later to take me to yet
another room for questioning. Angry beyond measure, she whips me all
night, telling me to yield information on the ‘forces’ protecting me.
“You are going nowhere,” she keeps shouting. “I have invested too much
in you!”
Clearing the ‘spirit’
The next morning Mama C eats her
breakfast while I starve: I have last eaten the previous morning. When
she finished, and whilst the ‘approved products’ leave for Cotonou,
Benin, to commence their journey to Italy, Mama C takes us four
‘unsuitables’ to visit three new, different ‘doctors’: one in the Agege
neighbourhood of Lagos, the second in rural Sango Ota village and the
third in remote Abeokuta in Ogun State. She clearly believes in
traditional ‘medicine’ and is desperate to find a treatment for the
‘demons’ we are said to carry.
The first two ‘doctors’ agree with
the first one that I am bad news, but the third, after roughly cutting
off most of my hair, declares me free from the ‘spirit’. The ‘evil
spirits’ in the other three girls, meanwhile, have been ‘beaten out of
them’ with dry whips. Back at the camp the first ‘doctor’ rages at Mama C
for approving me, insisting that the ‘doctor’ who ‘freed me from the
spirit’ is a fraud. “This girl will bring about your downfall! You will
end up in jail!” I am all the more convinced that he possesses not
supernatural powers, but certain information.The syndicates are
well-connected and someone may have told him that I am not who I say I
am. The ‘doctor’ keeps repeating that ‘forces’ are protecting me. But
Mama C insists that she is not to lose her investment.
Meanwhile, new ‘products’ have
arrived to pass through the rites that night. The whole camp is again in
the grip of fear as chilling screams indicate that some of the new
arrivals – two girls and a young man, I learned later – are also
murdered.
“Oghogho, I wonder what actually
brought you here. I never expected a girl like you to venture into
this,” says one of Mama C’s errand boys, as he enters the room I had
again been locked in later that night with a plate of food.He seems well
disposed to me. “You found and returned my Blackberry that I lost
during one of the pickpocketing training sessions,” he explains. I had
not realised the escort whose phone I found had been this boy; then, he
had worn a cap pressed deep into his eyes. “Other girls would just have
kept my phone,” he says. “You don’t belong here.I keep wondering what
level of poverty has made you endanger yourself. You don’t deserve
this.”
The plate of food is all I need to get my strength back. We are to travel the following morning.
Escape
As we are about to leave, I lose
my phone to the army officer. Searching all of us, he has taken Isoken’s
phone already and she has pointed at me to divert attention from
herself, saying I had a phone too. He takes mine at gunpoint.I can only
thank the heavens that it is dead. I had been upset because it didn’t
charge the previous night, but the fact that it won’t switch on is my
second lucky break: it has a lot of pictures and conversations I have
recorded in the camp. The disadvantage of losing my phone is that I
can’t contact our colleague Reece, who is to help me once I get to
Cotonou. I also can’t communicate with my editors back in Nigeria.
All along the road leading up to
the border, police and customs officers wave and greet Madam Eno and our
head of operations, Mr James. Nigerian Immigrations and Customs
officers also greet us warmly at the border post itself, whilst
enquiring if there is anything in it for them today.
“Welcome, Madam! How have sales been?”
Eno: “Not much.”
“But your batch was allowed entry yesterday, so why claim you haven’t been making sales? “Eno: “We are not the owner of yesterday’s batch of girls. We own these ones in this bus.”
“Haaa!You want to play a smart one? Not to worry, your boss will sort all this out with us.”
The officers then wave the minibus through without any form of documentation.
The original plan was for me to go
with the transport as far as Cotonou, the capital of our neighbouring
country Benin. But I don’t want to stretch it any longer. The border is
usually very crowded and I plan to escape as soon as we are there. It
works. Just after the Seme border post, in front of a crowded, muddy
market, I run. Merging with the crowd, I take my top off – I have
another top under it – and cover my head with a scarf. The army officer
is following me, looking for me. I dive into a store and lose him.
I travel the twenty kilometres
from the border motor park to Cotonou by minibus taxi.Colleague Reece –
alerted by a phone call the driver helps make to her to ensure that she
will be there to pay him – will wait for me there. Upon arrival, I see a
woman I recognise from her Facebook photo. “Reece?”“Tobore!” She cries
and holds out her arms to catch me. “I am safe.”
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