reallives1

Nigeria: Using voodoo to frighten trafficked children
To protect individuals, names have been changed in this case study.
Joy is 21 years old and living near Benin City, in Southern Nigeria. Benin City lies
within Edo State and has emerged as one of the most prolific trafficking hotspots
in the country. According to Mrs Eki Igbenedion, the wife of Edo State Governor,
and founder of ‘Idia Renaissance’ - the NGO that supports Joy and other
repatriated trafficked victims in the region - every household in Benin City knows
of friends or family that has been trafficked.
At 17 years of age, Joy was trafficked to Gabon, a country located South of
Nigeria, around the Gulf of Guinea and easily reachable by land and boat. Her
parents were separated but when her mother was approached and offered the
opportunity to send Joy to go and work abroad in Europe, her mother and father
clubbed together to make a large payment to the trafficker to enable Joy to go.
They were keen to have the opportunity to send their daughter abroad and earn
money for them. Joy wanted to go to school and had heard rumours that some
girls had been in similar situations but ended up in prostitution, but her parents
decided that the offer was too good to be true and they agreed to it, thinking of
the financial benefit they would accrue.
Before leaving, Joy was made to take an oath. She was taken, with her mother, to
a voodoo priest at a shrine in Benin City, where she describes how a live chicken
was killed in a ceremony in which a female priest took samples of her hair from
her head and pubic areas. They drank a local gin shnapps and she was made to
repeatedly swear that she would never runaway or she would be hurt or die. As a
Christian, Joy had never been to such a voodoo ceremony before and she was
scared, especially when the chicken died.
Joy was at this point told that if she left she would forever owe the ‘trafficker’
$45,000.
Leaving Nigeria, Joy travelled with ten other girls and was told that they were on
their way to Europe, although they only ever reached Gabon. When she arrived in
Gabon they were put into a house and men were brought to the place. Joy
realised that they were going to be prostitutes and in her own words she ‘refused
to take part.’ Other girls were made to sleep with many men every night and
received no money.
Joy says that once she was in Gabon she wanted to escape. She was not scared
of the oath, because it is known that oaths do not always work when you cross
the sea. She was resolute in escaping, having decided that the option of a
lifetime of work was bad enough to risk breaking her oath.
Luckily, Joy met some older girls who were able to plan an escape. They left one
night and went to the port area and five of them stowed away on a small boat,
hiding for two days and paying small amounts of money to officers for food. They
arrived in Lagos and managed to get back to their home town but Joy’s parents
were furious that she had returned. They had hoped she would stay and be able
to send back regular money. They were also angry because they had made a large
payment to the trafficker initially, which they saw as a waste. She is still not back
living with her parents but stays with a friend. Joy remains scared that the
traffickers will return and find her. Though she no longer sees her parents, Joy
has forgiven them and understands that they did what they did because they
needed money. She has forgiven them.
Joy has now returned to school and has a high school certificate. She plans to go
to University to study microbiology.
Trafficking of children for the purpose of domestic service, prostitution and other
forms of exploitative labour is a widespread phenomenon in Nigeria. Nigeria has
become a major player in the selling and buying of children and is one of the
biggest supplying, receiving and transit countries in West Africa. The major
reason for this is widespread poverty, large family size, urban to rural migration,
rapid urbanization and high school drop-out rates. In many instances, desperately
poor parents willingly cooperate with traffickers to give away their children for a
fee. Parents from overburdened rural families often give their children away to
city residents promising a better life. Traffickers exploit the trust of people,
exploiting a deep rooted tradition and practice in which families send away their
children to extended family for fostering.