On Thursday, 18-year-old Faith Joseph told her story of how traffickers fooled her into thinking she was going to work at a store in Lagos, but she rejected to become a prostitute in Mali.
The PUNCH said that Faith was a maid in Afuze, Owan East Local Government Area of Edo State, when she got a job as a salesgirl in Lagos State.
But when her parents found out that their daughter had been sold into slavery in Mali, they called the police.
With help from the Edo State Migration Agency, she was finally saved and brought back to Nigeria.
Faith said in Benin that when she got to Mali, she turned down all offers to engage in the illegal employment. She told her host in Mali that she had been assured she would be working as a salesgirl in Lagos.
She claimed, “I was told I would be a salesgirl in Lagos State.” We stayed at a hotel when we got to Lagos at night. The next day, we traveled to Cotonou in the Republic of Benin. I told them we had already crossed Lagos State. She (the trafficker) told us we hadn’t gotten to where we were going. She sent me to a driver in Cotonou, and the next day he brought me to Mali. They led me to one woman in Mali, but it wasn’t what I had been told. I informed her that what they were doing there was prostitution and that I couldn’t do it.
“I told them I wanted to go home. She told me I couldn’t go back until they found someone else to take my place. I was in Mali for three weeks before I went to the police station.
“Life was hard for me in Mali because I wouldn’t sell my body for sex. People were giving me money to eat until someone came to get me.
Lucky Agazumah, the Director General of the agency, advised people in Edo to report any incidences of human trafficking.
Agazumah claimed that Governor Monday Okpebholo was determined to go after human traffickers and make sure they were brought to justice.
Remember that the Edo State Government made these journeys illegal after many years of girls illegally migrating to Europe through Libya. This was because most of the girls who were brought outside the country were forced into prostitution by their traffickers.
In 2018, the Oba of Benin, His Royal Majesty Ewuare II, made native doctors in the state take back curses that had been put on victims.
The oaths that native doctors hired by the agents regularly took were undone, and the Oba put a curse on anyone who kept doing so.
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