Slave Labour: Parents, Agents Are Culpable
By Michael West
The unending incidents of trapped young Nigerians in search of greener pastures outside the shores of the country deserve a serious attention.
The harrowing experiences they go through in the hands their various “masters” under whose roofs they stay and work are dehumanising. The victims are being blamed for being the architects of their own woes. While many have been lucky to escape and return home, some others are either dead or ‘lost’ in the wilderness of slave labour in foreign lands.
I do not approve of desperate tendencies and craze for ‘leaving Nigeria at all cost’ among young men and women who think that the grass is lurch and greener on the other side. However, there is no crime in seeking better opportunities elsewhere but it has to be done legitimately. Fast, crooked and illegal or fake processes seem to be their preferred channels. Indeed, many of them are being hoodwinked and swindled by their agents. They become easy preys and vulnerable to the antics of the agents because they are desperate.
In my opinion, parents and government have the solution to this social malaise. Parents must stop encouraging, indulging or pushing their children into slavery and journey of no return in their quest for money. Government on its part must set up a crack team to track, arrest and prosecute the agents who thrive on the dehumanising business.It is possible to curtail to the barest minimum if our government summons the political will to deal with it. It is cruel to trick fellow human into slave labour under the guise of working overseas.
The shocking trajectory of the crime is that relations, friends, acquaintances and loved ones are found to be involved in ‘selling’ their kith and kins into slavery by sweet-talking them into fake prospects abroad. In many instances, they are promised lucrative wages as domestic workers, shop attendants, nannies, home teachers etc.who will earn hard currencies. As for men, they lure them with rewarding vocational jobs that require skilled and experienced hands like working as commercial or private chauffeurs, artisans and security workers. The victims always realise too late that they have been scammed and ‘sold’ into slavery. Breach of trust and act of betrayal on the part of trusted people involved is a major source of trauma for the victims.
A teenage girl was deceived into accepting to work as a domestic staff with the sum of N150,000 as monthly pay in Libya. She got baited by the offer and endured a long, dangerous journey through the desert to Libya during which she witnessed how drivers and other men maltreated and raped women and young girls at will.
The reality of being sold into slavery dawned on the unsuspecting victims when they were asked to offer sex to male clients at the command of their agents. When the girl in question protested that sex to strange men was not part of the deal, reminding her ‘madam’ that she was in Libya to do the job of a “house help.” She was told that was part of her duty in the house. That was the beginning of her journey into dark side of life that nearly cost her life.
Apart from prostitution, these hapless young women are made to consent to pay heavy sums as “debts” incurred to facilitate their exit from Nigeria. This is aside the money they paid to the supposed agents for the same purpose. Their travel documents will be seized while they disperse them to various “clients” to work in order to pay their “debts.” It is when they groan under the heavy yoke of hard labour, sexual abuse, maltreatment, hunger and ill Health that the victims usually cry out for help.
In the case of the teenage girl, she was locked up in a room for four days without food for refusing to “service” the male clients sexually. She was told to pay $4,000 to cover her travel expenses and made to swear an oath that she would not run away. That was how the girl and her co-travellers started having unprotected sex with different men on daily basis. Whenever she got pregnant she was forced to abort. Some of her colleagues contracted sexually transmitted diseases, committed several abortions and a few of them died in the process.
The girl was later sold to a Nigerian man in the country as “sex slave.”She ran away from her Nigerian“master” and hooked up with another man she thought would rescue her only to be abducted by an extreme Islamist gang, ISIS. They killed her new man but she was spared because she was pregnant at the time but that did not save her from sexual abuse in the camp of the rampaging Islamists. Her captors took her to an underground prison and compelled her to marry their member who raped her. Three years into her ordeal, Libyan soldiers facilitated her escape, and International Organisation for Migration (IOM) repatriated her to Nigeria.
Over the years, the mass media have been awash with such horrifying stories of Nigerian women and girls trafficked for sexual and labour exploitation in some Arab countries like Libya, United Arab Emirate, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and European destinations like Italy and Ireland.
Government should go after the agencies and rings of individuals that engage in this illicit business. Whistleblowing tactics should be employed to arrest the criminals. There should be strident campaign against desperation for overseas jobs if valid and official procedures will not be adhered to.
Parents, too, should be made accountable. Any parents found culpable in their daughters’ desperate moves that result to problem should be prosecuted. Human trafficking rings around the country are not difficult to identify if there’s genuine willingness to burst the ring. In order to restore human dignity and our national pride, this modern-day slavery must stop.
