‘Big women’ besiege Benue community to recruit young girls for sexual exploitation during festivals

Many young girls from Benue State were said to have been innocently trafficked to various African and European countries for the purpose of working as prostitutes.

The Makurdi commander of National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Aganran Ganiu Alao, who made this shocking revelation, said rich women often come to traffic the victims during the new yam festival and Christmas period, The Nation reports.

He said: “Obi and Oju axis are very close to each other and highly endemic in trafficking in persons. They are areas that have been known as border points where most of the victims in Benue State are taken through to the South East because they share boundaries with Ebonyi and the rest.

“They take victims from there to Enugu, Delta, Port Harcourt and other neighbouring states. We also have international trafficking taking place there.

“In the course going there for sensitization and campaigns, we discovered that a lot of children from these areas are in Mali and Bukina Faso engaging in prostitution. A lot of them.

“They normally come home during the Igede Agba Festival also known as New Yam Festival. They just did one about a month ago.

“During this festival, most of the victims that have gone out come home to celebrate and also come home in December to showcase whatever they have been able to achieve in those countries they have gone to engage in prostitution.

“In the course of this also, we have a lot of their madams coming home. When they come home, it is also an avenue for them to recruit more girls and take them to places like Mali, Burkina Faso and the rest.

“We go there during this period for sensitization and campaign, especially during and after Christmas.

“The Igede Agba held before this last one, we were part of the programme from the beginning to the end.”

He noted that the Makurdi Zonal Command came on board in 2013 and since then, “we have been able to rescue over 860 victims of human trafficking. We have been able to process (investigate) over 750 cases of human trafficking, child labour and child abuse.

“Within that period till date, we have also been able to have 23 convictions. At the moment, we have over 14 cases that are pending in court.

“The Benue State Command covers the entire North Central zone and not only Benue. As we work here in Benue, we also work in Taraba, Jos, Kogi and Nasarawa states, but because our office is in Benue State, that is why our work is more in the state.”

Ejeh also recalled his experience when he travelled to Cairo, Egypt for a programme of the African Union last year.

He said: “I was asking to know if there was any Igede person there. Before the end of that day, I saw someone who said she was trafficked from Ogun State all the way to Cairo.

“When she arrived in Cairo, they seized her travel documents and she has been stranded there for more than five years.  Our children have continually been sexually abused, our children have continually been at the mercy of merchants.”

Checks revealed that the incident of trafficking of male children in Igede is worsened by an age-long traditional practice called Okwurumi. According to Ejeh, it is a socio-cultural issue that a whole lot of people don’t like to talk about. He said: “It is a practice whereby children and youths from the age of five to adulthood are trafficked for economic purposes to the southwestern part of the country to work on the farms.

“It is socio-cultural in Igede land because it is widely accepted as a means of earning income and a means of social certification cum wealth distribution among Igede people.

“When you see old people in Igede, many of them must have gone for Okwurumi when they were in primary or secondary school.”

Explaining how the practice works, he said: “A man who owns a large farm in the South West, possibly an Igede man, comes home to recruit so many workers.

“In the whole of the six states in the South West, an Igede person must recruit the highest number of non-indigenous settlers in that community.

“Because of the intensity of work in agriculture, the young ones of these days who do not want to get themselves dirty prefer to go to urban areas to work as house helps. They work as unskilled labourers, washing dishes and pounding yams for food vendors.”

He added: “There is a terrible motor park in Igede where children are trafficked from.  We went to the park and we summoned all the leaders of the union and threatened them, using NAPTIP.

“We told them that anybody who engages in transporting children to any part of the country without the consent of the traditional ruler or their parents would be dealt with.  A lot of them became afraid.

“According to what I was told, any time they see underage children who say they are travelling to see their uncles, they now chase them back or get the driver arrested and all of that. That is part of the impact we have made.

“We have visited more than 25 communities. In September we spent more than eight days at home moving from one village to another, speaking to community leaders, religious leaders , market women, youth groups and student unions, among others, about the dangers that our children are facing and about the existential threat in the sense that if you go to Igede community, you will hardly see able bodied boys and girls. All the people you would see are old or disabled people. Why? The young ones have gone for Okwurumi economic migration. They have been trafficked to urban areas to work as house helps.

Speaking from his experience in dealing with the menace, the Zonal Commander of National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Aganran Ganiu Alao, said: “At the beginning of planting season, people come in and take able bodied men from the state to the South West, specifically to Lagos and Osun states, purposely for farming. In the course of taking them away, there is an intermediary who we call trawley.

“These intermediaries benefit from the labour of these victims in the sense that a certain percentage of what is due to the victims is also given to them. To us, exploitation has taken place there. Assuming they are supposed to pay those people N10,000 per month, the intermediary will be there to get N2,000 or N3,000 from that money every month.

“The victims are always paid at the end of the year. They work from January to December when the bulk of the money is paid. At the end of the day, there is a shortage because the go between will get a certain amount from that money.

“When that happens, they come to us crying that they have been exploited. That is when we come in to intercept them. Purely, it is labour exploitation.”

The practice, he said, is tantamount to labour exploitation which is against NAPTIP law.

He said: “It is only when they have issues with the people that took them to the South West (traffickers) that we get to know and investigate.

“These are able bodied young men that are taken away to work in plantation farms, rice farms and cassava farms. They leave here because of the high wages they have been promised, but at the end of the day, you discover that a lot of labour exploitation comes in.

“Even in those places they are going to work, they are not properly fed and they come back with a lot of sickness.”

Although child trafficking is most prevalent in Igede, the NAPTIP Makurdi Zonal Commander, said: “I must be honest with you that almost all the 17 local government areas in Benue State are endemic to trafficking.”