Dark Torturous Tunnel of Sex Slavery: I was Sold, Resold into Sex Slavery in Libya
I was sold and resold and forced to sleep with a dozen men daily in Libya – 18-year-old Eugenia
Eugenia (surname withheld to protect her identity), from Auchi, Edo
State, was a mere 15-year old when she was misled into a journey that
turned out to be the biggest horror any girl her age could ever face.
According to the teenage girl, who is now back in Nigeria, it was in her
final year and she was preparing to sit for her school certificate
examination. She had studied hard and prepared dutifully, attending
tutorial classes, with the hope of swinging it in one sitting. However,
there was a snag. Her father, a bus driver, was having tough time
financially and money was scarce at home. In fact, there was barely
enough to feed. As such, he could not raise the fee to enroll her.
Consequently, her step-mother suggested that she went to join a relative
– her step-mother’s sister, Gift Osayende, in Germany and try to make a
better life. Her father fell for the idea; as a young, girl, she also
literally lapped it up. In fact, she felt really excited and looked
forward to ‘traveling abroad’.
“I left Nigeria on August 4, 2017, at 15. I was supposed to leave for
Germany through Libya, but first, they took me to swear an oath at a
juju place. We were three; me and two other girls. We were to pay 30,000
Euros back to our sponsors. But they never for once told me they were
luring me into prostitution work,” she said in a voice laden with
sadness and regret.
“Our journey started at Big Joe Park, Akpakpava Road, Benin City en
route Kano. On our way, we met some boys who were also traveling out of
the country. From Kano, we were given fake passports to cross the border
into Niger Republic. We were 27 in number that were loaded into a bus
headed for Agadez in Niger. We had to lap each other. We left Niger
border by 6pm and got to Agadez by 7am. We spent four horrific days in
Agadez – it was tough getting water to drink, not to talk of bath. Food
was also scarce. Finally, the Hilux vehicle that was to take us through
the Sahara Desert arrived and we started on our next phase of travel to
Libya. At a point, I was running out of water and feeling very weak.
Eventually, I passed out but was revived. Not long after that, we were
chased by robbers, who shot sporadically at our vehicle. A stray bullet
hit and killed one of us, a nursing mother and the baby was handed over
to the driver.
“Finally, we got to a village in the desert. It was at night and we were
desperate for water. We found a well and we gladly drank, cooked and
bathed with the water. But in the morning, we saw five dead bodies in
the well. We were horrified but there was nothing we could do.”
Harvest of death
“The following day, we continued on our journey, but something terrible
happened. 15 of the 27 passengers in the Hilux fell off and died. The
stick they were all holding unto as they sat on the edge of the Hilux
became weak and unexpectedly broke. The sad part was that we could not
even bury them. We just left them there to rot.
“A week after we left Agadez, we arrived Gatron in Libya. We had spent
seven unforgettable days in the desert. But if I thought I had been
through hell, it was child’s play compared to the horror I was going to
be shoved into.”
On arrival, different burgers – that’s what they called the men/women
who came to receive the travelers, came to pick them. Eugenia’s burger
was a Nigerian Yoruba man simply addressed as Rasheed. Rasheed ran a
ghetto, where he kept people, his slaves – as Eugenia was to eventually
find out. That first day, they were fed well, she recalled. But that was
where it ended.
“The next day, they told us to call our people in Nigeria to send us
money, as they could not continue feeding us for free. Of course there
was nobody to send me money. Even the lady that was supposed to be
taking me to Germany was nowhere to be found. And then they started
baring their fangs. Rasheed came and took us all girls to work as
prostitutes in his connection house – that’s what they call their
brothels – and collected money for the services we rendered. Sometimes,
he also slept with the girls. We did ‘short-time’ another word for quick
sex or day-break, which means we slept over.”
Raped, deflowered
“As a 15-year-old, I was a virgin, innocent of sex, but Rasheed himself
deflowered me, seeing that I was timid and proving stubborn. He called
four hefty boys to hold and spread me out and forcefully penetrated me.
That way, I had nothing to protect anymore. Then he launched me into the
business. I had no choice. Besides, there was no room for stubbornness,
as I was not given food any day I did not work or deliberately withdrew
my service. They never provided us with clothes, condoms or even
toiletries.
“It was my first customer, Bright, who bought me condoms, tissue and
stuff when I explained my situation and fears to him. He even gave me
money for medicine and clothes to look good. Even then, most of the
clients refused to use condoms, so we devised a way of using baby wipes
to protect ourselves by rolling like 15 pieces into a bunch and
inserting it into out body. That way, their fluid didn’t get into our
bodies. When they were done, we would pull it out and dispose.
For the guys, especially those who couldn’t get people to send them
money from Nigeria, Eugenia submits that she could not tell who suffered
a worse fate between them and the girls who were forced into
prostitution, as she said they were locked in a kind of cell called
tranke and severely beaten on a daily basis.
“I was in Rasheed’s ghetto for about three months; and then he started
getting irritated and complaining that he was tired of me eating his
food for free. That was in spite of the fact that he was collecting
money on my head for sex rendered to his clients. He claimed the woman
who contracted him to ferry me did not pay him the agreed money and
swore to recoup his money back. So he sold me off to one Mr. John, an
Edo State indigene from an Esan for 5,000dinar.
“At Mr. John’s place, I met six other girls who told me to calm down,
that there was no escape for me. They advised me to just work the money
and free myself. The hard part however was that I was expected to pay
back four times the money he paid on me. It was a hectic and horrifying
experience for me. Some days, I did as many as a dozen men in one day –
10 sharp-sharp (quickies) customers; in between, I could be contracted
to go out and service a short-time client; and then come back to wash up
and proceed to sleep over at another client’s.”
Horror!
“I had lots of horrific and nasty experience while working for Mr John.
In fact, Mr. John himself was one of my biggest problems. Some days, he
would just come to the connection center and pick me up on the pretext
of going for an outside job, whereas he was actually taking me to his
place, where he would have sex with me anyhow with a gun by his side. I
also got beaten up on several occasions. In fact there was a time I
joined some girls to try to run away; when they caught us, they took us
to one connection house run by one very dangerous Yoruba man called
Soponna. Words were rife that that was where they took any girl who
tried to be stubborn or run away, as he had a way of teaching them
bitter lessons. So when they took me to Soponna’s place, the girls,
about 30 of them, gave me general beating. It was the sort of beating
you have to experience to fathom. After the beating, Soponna then told
four girls to hold and spread me out face up. He then proceeded to give
me 12 strokes of the cane right on my private part. It was a most
painful experience.
“I worked for Mr. John for a year and six months before I gained my
freedom. Because it was a job I hated, I only worked a bit to raise
money to start a food business of my own. I was happy and feeling
contented, but tragedy struck again.”
Resold!
“Things went well for about three months, as tried to settle in and
enjoy my new-found freedom, until I was set-up and kidnapped. It was the
taxi man that was taking me to buy foodstuff who sold me out to those
who kidnapped me. While in the kidnappers’ den, I was raped repeatedly,
beaten and tortured. And then I was resold and I had to start afresh the
vicious cycle.
“The owner of the place where I was sold was one Madam Mary James. She
took me to Gatron, my first stop when I landed in Libya. She said
clients paid more there than Sabah where we were. In truth, I was able
to pay back her money after two months.
“After that experience, I just wanted to relocate back to Nigeria, as it
was clear to me that I was neither safe nor was my freedom guaranteed
in that country. I learnt there was a way I could come back to Nigeria
through the same desert route that I came. So I started saving money – I
needed about 700,000 in naira to pay my way back. While I was working
that money, I encountered a boy, Chibuike, who was so nice to us girls
and soon became very popular among the girls. It was with him that I
saved the money I planned to travel with. Unfortunately the other guys
became jealous and plotted against him. They got a Niger Republic boy to
start trouble with him and in the process, stabbed and killed him. More
painful for me was the fact that nobody knew where he kept my money.
The police moved in and tried to make arrests, so we bolted. In my bid
to escape, me and another girl, Grace, ran into the desert. On one
occasion, while they were chasing us, we ran in different directions and
that was the last I saw or heard of her. I cannot tell if she is still
alive or dead. While in the desert, anytime I heard a vehicle coming, I
would bury myself with sand to avoid being spotted. I was in the desert
for two weeks. One day, I saw a Hilux coming from Nigeria, I explained
my situation to them and they gave me a lift back to Libya. There, I met
a lady, Anabel, who took me to her connection centre. It was there I
heard that voluntary returnees were registering for a free flight
through IOM -International Organisation for Migration. I enrolled and
three months after, I was flown along with others back to Nigeria.
Worse than hell
“To say that I saw hell in those three years is an understatement. What I
experienced was worse than hell. Yes I blame my dad for falling for the
temptation to send his 15-year-old on such a trip, but it was in
ignorance. I will be 19 on March 17 this year. On my return, I told him
everything I went through but there was nothing he could do.
“I’m trying to put all behind me now. I now run a boutique in Auchi,
courtesy of the money IOM supported me with. Special thanks to Mr. Osita
Osemene and his team for the training for returnees in Lagos. The good
thing is that I never got addicted to sex. I have a boyfriend now, who
says he actually loves me because I have experienced the hard side of
life and therefore exposed.
Word for intending travellers?
“Yes, I try to alert people of this danger but I find that rather than
heed my warning, what they do is stigmatise me. So, I’ve learnt to keep
to myself – except when highly necessary.”
I lost my womb working as a sex slave in Senegal
The circumstances that led to Saadat embarking on the trip to Senegal
were not much different from that of Eugenia. She had finished training
as a hairdresser at 22 and needed money to procure equipment to
establish. Whilst she was lamenting and making contacts, she spoke to
her friend, Sube, a fellow indigene of Auchi but who was in Senegal and
purportedly doing well. Following series of chats on whatsapp, she
linked her with her madam, who painted a beautiful picture of how she
could make good money making hair in that country.
In not time, she began making preparations to travel to Senegal.
“The madam, Madam Blessing, made all arrangements and paid for my
transportation. We travelled by bus and then bike through thick forest.
Practically, I would say it was my friend who recruited me for this
business, because she deliberately lied to me about the nature of the
work she was doing. From Lagos, we boarded a bus to Cotonou; from there
we boarded another to Mali, and then Senegal.
“The first sign that it wasn’t going to be altogether a rosy trip was in
Cotonou, where my guide, Oga Chucks tried to force himself on me, but I
reached out to the madam and she issued him a strict warning to steer
clear of me. Thereafter, there were no incidences until we got to
Senegal.
“Funny enough, when we arrived our destination, I didn’t even know we
had reached our destination. It was a fearful whole day bike ride
through the forest. The bike man took me from Bamako in Mali to Senegal.
I was so scared all through the ride, but I hardly uttered a word
because the man had horror written all over his face. Even when I
summoned the courage to say anything, he never responded. I was careful
not to annoy him because if he decided to kill me there, there was
nobody in sight to challenge him. Finally, we got to a place called
Kimba. There, a woman came to meet me and introduced herself as Madam
Blessing. She said she was the one I was coming to meet. My first shock
was that the place was a little less that a village. It was a place
where they mine gold and the houses were made of nylon (wrapped around
planks). We were quite a number there, including a girl called Berebere
and the stupid girl that lured me there.
“Surprised at the whole scenery, I kept asking, ‘Is this where we’re
coming?’ But I got no concrete answer. I told my friend who linked me
that I couldn’t stay in a place like that because my body was not
conditioned for that kind of cold, but she told me that was where we
would stay. Deliberately, they left me to rest for two days, seeing that
the trip was a rough one. It was after that that Madam Blessing told me
to make her hair, and that kind of put my mind at rest. When I
finished, she said I did well; this also raised my hope a bit, as I
thought she had a shop where she was going to keep me. It wasn’t however
long before she burst my little bubble. She told me in clear terms that
hairdressing was not the work I came there to do and that I was there
to do prostitution work. My friend then told me that I had no choice but
to comply. She said I however had a chance of regaining my freedom
after doing the work for a while. I asked why she didn’t tell me this
before, but she gave me no answer. Eventually, I complied and joined in
the trade when I saw no way out.”
Speaking of her experience on the job, Saadat said it was not something she wished to remember.
“I slept with over twenty men on a daily basis. My first day was
especially scary, as my first customer released blood. I was lucky he
used a condom otherwise he would have released whatever disease he was
coming with into my body. I freaked out and told my colleagues that I
couldn’t continue, because I couldn’t fathom how a man could release
blood. But they prevailed on me, citing the fact that I was trapped.
When I eventually continued, I have no word to describe it. Sometimes, I
slept with 30 men! They paid 2000 cepher per short time.”
Asked if she had a daily target, Saadat said, “No, but it depends on
your capacity. If you can sleep with 100 men per day, so be it – in
fact, the better, as it would help you reach your target payback to the
madam and regain your freedom. I was expected to pay back 1.650million
cepher before I regained my freedom. So, I usually gave all the money I
made to my madam, out of which she would remove 1,000 cepher for my
house rent and 2,000 for my feeding. This is outside the money for bath
water and other stuffs.
“Sometimes, we went to provide daybreak service to clients and they paid
10,000 cepher. So there were days I made as much as 50,000 cepher.
Sometimes, clients would dash you extra money but rather than keep it to
yourself, you want to just pay it out to your madam, so that you can
reach your target and get your freedom. She said the money was charges
for my transportation to Senegal and her pay.
“Yes I was not a virgin when I travelled because I already had a
boyfriend but I was not in any way prepared for what I faced in that
country. The luck I had was that the men were using condom.
“In the course of the work, I struck a friendship with a girl, who took
pity on me, seeing that I was suffering a lot due to the rigours of the
work. Some of the men’s penis was monstrous and touching my womb, to the
extent that I started feeling pains inside. But I dared not stop. At a
point, I had a nagging chest pain; so my new friend linked me with a
boy. She told him I was new in the business and he should assist me in
whatever way he could. So the boy started giving me money, which I
remitted to my madam, while I took days off to rest. He had lots of
money because he worked in the gold mine nearby. But I would leave home
to make out that I was going to work. Mind, you, he was not my boyfriend
and we had no emotional attachment. It wasn’t even possible for you to
have a boyfriend while doing that job. But he did sleep with me once,
the first day he met me.”
Losing her womb
“I did the sex slave work for three or four months…. But I kept praying
to God for a way out. I was sleeping with too many men than my body
could take.”
At this point, Saadat got really emotional and started crying.
“It got to a point the pain became really unbearable. I could not sit
well and kept having this nagging pain inside my stomach. I could not do
anything with my body and if anyone touched me, it was as if they were
pricking me with a needle. I took drugs but it did not go away. Yet, I
still had to do the job except on days my benefactor gave me money. Even
if I wanted to take days off, my madam had friends there, who kept
watch over us. At about the time my womb fell, my benefactor was out of
town. I didn’t even know it was my womb that had fallen. I guess it was
when I continued with the job in spite of the pain that it finally fell
out of place. It was one of the girls who told me to go into the
bathroom and insert my hand into my vagina, and that if I felt something
shaking, then I should know that it’s my womb that had fallen.”
Asked how many men she might have slept with during her enslavement,
Saadat said, “No, that will be difficult. But like I said, I slept with
twenty men per day on the average. However, on few occasions when
business was down, I may have like three clients. On such occasions, my
madam would be visibly annoyed and raving. She would tell us to go after
the men if they didn’t come after us.”
On a few occasions, Saadat got fed up and tried to revolt, even run
away, but the other girls discouraged her, warning her of the grave
consequences.
Her lucky escape
“While I was sick, my madam became really impatient and started
harassing me on why I wasn’t working and remitting money. I told her I
was not well and that the spot where I was operated upon for
appendicitis was paining me. But rather than allow me rest, she ordered
that I be given ammoxil, saying that it would calm me down. That
singular act of hers angered the other girls, as they began asking if
she wanted me to die.
“However, that was turning point for me, as I made up my mind to find my
way back home, come what may. I borrowed the phone of my benefactor and
called my mom to intimate her on what I was going through. I also
called my boyfriend in Nigeria and we devised a plan to nail her. He
told me to collect my madam’s phone number, so he could start chatting
with her up, as if he was in love with her. By that time, I had saved up
about 300,000 cepher with my friends, meant to be delivered to my
madam. I also cried to my friends to help me raise more money if they
didn’t want me to die in that village. Odufa told me that her sister
knew the woman right to her home in Nigeria; it was she, who contacted
her sister, who now contacted the police to arrest our madam during her
visit to Nigeria at Christmas. All through the plan, we were careful not
to let Sube, the girl who connected me, in, because she was always on
madam’s side. The police then invited NAPTIP (the National Agency for
the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons) officials.
“That was how we escaped and found our way back to Nigeria in February this year. We were three: Me, Odufa and Best.”
Has she been to a hospital?
Asked if she has been to a proper hospital, since arriving Nigeria, to
ascertain if indeed her womb has fallen and if there is possibility of a
medical solution, Saadat said, “The reason I actually haven’t been to a
hospital is because I don’t want my biggest fear to be confirmed. I
don’t want any doctor telling me that my womb has indeed fallen and that
I would not be able to have a baby of my own.”
On whether she has received any benefit from NAPTIP, Saadat said, “Yes,
they gave me N5,000 transport stipend to travel from Benin to Auchi.
Only IOM (International Organisation for Migration) tried to be of help
by giving us business training. So, now I am hoping to start a business
of my own, possibly a boutique.”
On the possibility of her story helping younger girls and other
intending travellers to take better decisions Saadat replied rather
cynically, “That’s if they would listen.”
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