The following transcript is a genuine account, shared with Arise by a survivor in Nigeria. It illustrates a tragic reality: that those who experience trafficking usually experience traumatic secondary consequences - criminalisation, detention, assault, and social isolation amongst others.
As we mark World Day Against Trafficking, we must think of those who experience such horrendous crimes, and understand the way political and legal structures can compound suffering when not designed correctly. We must also reaffirm our commitment to prevention: and strive to support high-risk communities improve prospects for young people, increase awareness of the threats posed by traffickers, and benefit from widened access to public services.
Finally, we must also take the positive lesson from this account: that successful, meaningful rehabilitation is possible, and should be a reality for every survivor. You can help Arise continue to do that here.
Trafficked
I am 27 years old. I left university in 2017, having studied Chemistry. In 2017, a friend of mine was thinking about travelling to Libya. She said all I needed was 400,000 Naira (around £1,000 in 2017 exchange rates), and that we would go by road. I didn’t tell my friends or family, because I knew they’d be upset. My friend said we were going to get housework jobs, and I will be paid 100 to 150 Libyan dinar (then, around £85) per month.
I didn't really know anything and I just wanted to leave Nigeria to look for better opportunities.
We came to Lagos, and from Lagos we entered a bus that took us through Kano. We were going from one road to another, sometimes sleeping outside. The journey took almost a month. When we got there, we were asked to put on some costumes, and they took photos of us and posted them on Facebook. They took photos of us, and collected our phones. After which we met some older ladies, they were our buyers - and they had already purchased us.
When I met my buyer, she told me that I had to pay her 2 million Naira, and that she had already paid the lady that brought us there. She said that she would help us look for a Libyan family to work for and I said to myself, this is actually what I came here for, so I agreed - although I had not know that I had to pay 2 million Naira.
When she got a family for me at first, the family was too big for me. It was an extended family - they lived all together in the house. I was told I had to clean for all of them. I couldn’t manage all the work - and the family complained that I was lazy and they sent me back to her (my buyer).
I was told if I couldn’t work I would be sent to the connection house, which is where ladies are made to do prostitution. She found me another house, but the men of the family began to molest me. When I complained to the woman I work for, she started getting angry because her husband was among the men molesting me.
She started mistreating me. Initially she gave me a room to sleep in but after telling her I was being molested by the men in her house, she made me sleep under the stairs. At 4am, I would wake up, work until as late as 1am, before I went to bed. I was paying and paying my buyer - but after a year I had not even been able to pay her 500,000 Naira.
On a monthly basis, they'd pay me 100 Libyan Dinar, and I would give my madam (buyer/trafficker) 90 Libyan Dinar, so I had only 10 Dinar for myself, and I had no money, and was in Libya for two years.
Irregular Migration
One of the illegal migrants like myself told me about crossing to Italy over the water. I was told to pay 150 Dinar to be transported - I think by boat but I'm not sure because it was not successful.
So we paid the money. I didn't pay my madam (buyer) that month because I was ready to leave. We were told, on the day we were supposed to leave, that the water was not calm. I told my madam that I want to shift my day off, and so the day we were supposed to cross to Italy, we were taken close to the seaport. We were close to 20 in number, but were told that there were more people about to join us.
As we were waiting, a group of men with guns came, and they were speaking Arabic I couldn't understand. I didn't learn how to speak Arabic because the husband of the woman I did house work for understood English.
Arrest
The men with guns said they were arresting us, so I was happy - because I heard that illegal migrants are deported once they are arrested. In Libya, our case was different - they didn't deport, they kept those arrested in a holding cell, and asked detainees to call home and ask for money. That was the first time I called home for money, because the men that arrested us said that they would kill us. I realised that they were probably not police, and that we had probably been illegally arrested.
They asked us to pay 1.2 million Naira. Some people could not pay, but I called home and my parents raised the money and sent it. They told us that if they were to just release us, they would arrest us again. They said if we wanted to go back to our country, and that we should tell our parents to pay extra money for transportation.
The 1.2 million was just for being arrested, my parents paid over 2 million Naira in total to get me home. Only a few of us were able to get the money at the time.
Detention
We were detained for 2 weeks, and we barely had food to eat. We were given bread once in 2 days. One night, they took five of us. We got into a Hilux truck with armed men. I don't know the name of the place they took us through, but we were handed over to other people, that was how we started our journey back to Nigeria.
I then heard my employer was enquiring about me, from my buyer, and that she was looking for me. I knew that If I didn't return to Nigeria, and had instead returned to my buyer, she would have sold me into prostitution, rather than arrange more domestic work for me. I called my brother and my father when I could, and I told them I was going to die.
Dangerous Travel
The journey back was faster, and far less painful than the journey there. On the way to Libya initially, we were sleeping on the road and in connection houses, where I cannot count how many times I was molested. But going back, there was nothing like that - the journey was smoother compared to the first one.
Isolation and Social Estrangement
We arrived at Kano and my brother came there to pick me up. When I eventually got back, I felt guilty and disgraced, and felt I'd embarrassed my family. They tried not to make me feel guilty.
I didn't not want to stay at home, because when I got back, everyone had heard my story and I didn't like the way everyone was looking at me. I returned to my home in Nigeria in 2019, and came to Lagos in 2021.
I began to do odd cleaning jobs for organisations and then proceeded to cleaning homes three times a week. After this, I got a job in a logistics company, where I was paid 50,000 Naira monthly, that was the first decent salary I earned.
The company folded up and I signed up for 2 months free culinary skills programme, where I got referred for the WB Skills training programme sponsored by Arise. I was starting to work freelance after this, trying to make self-employment work.
Rehabilitation?
Eventually I was selected for another programme - the "EmpowerHer Initiative", also sponsored by Arise. I joined the initiative, and realised why I’d been struggling with my self-employment. Once I learnt budgeting especially, and began to apply what I learnt in my business, I noticed the effects in my income. I am now a chef, and run a small food business. The startup fund from the programme helped me purchase some equipment I needed to scale up my business.
I am secure and the business is growing - before this programme, I was probably losing money. Before this class, I would notice that I was going beyond budgets, and making a loss at times, even though I had customers. I have security now, and feel happy for the future.
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Anna’s* story is not atypical, and sadly, many Nigerian women and children are at increasing risk of trafficking and exploitation. Violence in the north of the country, and wide areas with high internal displacement rates, have forced many into desperate circumstances.
Such vulnerability is especially serious, given Nigeria's increasing prominence and already-considerable size. The country accounts for almost half of West Africa’s population with approximately 213 million people, and has an extremely young population.
At-risk women and girls are being targeted for sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, rape and forced marriage (for illegal adoption and ritual purposes), organ harvesting, and street begging. Economic hardship, enhanced by the pandemic, corruption, political instability, and violent conflict, has disrupted rural commerce and livelihoods.
Recent analyses also highlight the prevalence of forced labor. High-risk industries include mining, textile manufacturing and agriculture, and those most at risk include rural citizens, those internally displaced, and those working informally (particularly including migrants). Inflation has heightened the cost of survival, and most rural Nigerians are not protected by underdeveloped social protections. More have become vulnerable, indebted, and desperate as a result. In the areas we are actively working in, we have seen growing distress and hunger, and families made more susceptible to trafficking and enslavement.
Whilst the above account ends with hope for a recovered future, many are not so lucky. This week, as we reaffirm our commitment to preventing such horrific crimes, we do so without naivety in regard to the scale of the challenge - fuelled by global instability and mass mobility.
If you have any means, please consider supporting some of the work Arise is doing - a little really does go a long way.
Above: Other Arise-sponsored graduates of culinary college in Nigeria
*Anna is a pseudonym.
** The cover photo used is a stock photo, in order to keep the subject's identity hidden.
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