19-year-old Nigerian girl narrowly escapes forced prostitution in Italy
By Emmanuel Adepoju
“What do you mean clients?” The answer she got in return to that question was the first inkling she had of where she really was headed.
But it was already late, way too late.
“Don’t you know that when you get to Italy you’ll be working as prostitutes?” came the chilling response.
Only 19 years old, Dora had that conversation in war-torn Libya, while being beaten by a Nigerian man keeping watch over her.
“He beat me with a belt, he beat me like a goat,” she says. “He said we were not behaving properly — and we should not think we can behave like this with our clients in Italy.”
A few months back she was just an innocent teenager who thought the only way to escape the poverty characterising her birthplace on the outskirts of Benin City was to leave the country.
Oblivious of their real intentions, she struck a deal with a group which turned out to be a criminal network.
The deal: she would pay €30,000, about N6 million, after settling in Italy in exchange for the costs of travelling over there, and the employment she’ll be given once there.
“I thought that when I came here they would look for a job for me but I didn’t know it was prostitution,” she says.
They didn’t set out on the 4,300 km trip across land, desert and sea until she had sworn an oath in the presence of a juju priest.
“The man told us that if we don’t pay the amount, the curse is going to kill us, and if we run away, the curse is going to kill us.”
Getting to Libya wasn’t a child’s play either. Her friend was raped. Her money was stolen and she almost starved to death.
Even in Libya, “People tried to rape us many times”. It was there that she found out she was headed into prostitution.
Did she turn back? Although she began to plot an escape, she didn’t turn back. Instead, she swelled the number, if only by one, of people who attempt to cross the Mediterranean sea by boat.
“When I saw the dinghy I shuddered, I trembled, and then I started to pray.”
God answered her prayers, as it turned out. She landed at the port in Sicily like many others must have in times past. But unlike those, she fainted on arrival. And that was her saving grace. 11 days of being fed intravenously at the hospital after, her travelling company was gone.
From the hospital, she was released into the hands of the police and International Organisation for Migration (IOM) staff.
She was lucky. Mary wasn’t.
Mary arrived in Italy in August at age 13. Her brother who first subjected her to a typical juju ritual which included drawing her blood and removing some of her pubic hair, sold her to traffickers, FT reports.
When she got to Libya, she was raped and forced into prostitution for the months preceding her crossing the Mediterranean.
Mary landed in Italy and continued the prostitution business. She survived only one night though. The second night she collapsed in front of the Cuneo train station and was rushed to hospital. There, she was found by a group of Catholic volunteers who have been taking care of her.
“Hers is an immense tragedy. It’s the cruelty of it: how can a mother abandon her daughter and a brother sell his 12-year-old sister?” says Katiuscia Vitaggio who has helped Nigerian Victims in Italy for years.
And there are many others.
Although the journey has become more difficult as the trafffickers seek to minimise cost, the Italian-Nigerian sex has boomed in 2015.
Initially, traffickers transported women and girls by air after arranging for fake documents. Now, they take advantage of the unrest in Libya to travel by land and sea. Although this poses more risk, it incurs less costs.
And Nigerians, unlike those involuntarily made refugees in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, brave the enormous risk because they have lost hope in the future their home offers.
According to the IOM, the number of Nigerian women smuggled into Italy in 2015 is four times the number of those smuggled in 2014.
Between January and October 2015, a total of 19,576 Nigerians arrived Italy via sea as against 6,951 over the same period the previous year. Only Eritrea has a larger figure (37, 796). Even war torn Syria say her number drop from 32,681 in 2014 to 7,232 in 2015.
Meanwhile, their home (Nigeria) is Africa’s biggest economy with a vast population and numerous natural resources.
In Nigeria, according to the Financial Times, “only a tiny elite has benefited from the wealth of the country’s vast oil exports”.
Nigeria continues to grapple with massive poverty, a fact not lost on its government.
Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the country’s vice president has always admitted that much.
“The Nigerian people, whether from the southwest, northeast, are united in one thing – the majority are extremely poor, and the majority want real opportunities,” he told an online newspaper.
While the new government seeks ways to improve the lot of the country’s extremely poor masses, a campaign to build the people’s faith in their country might be in order.
And yes, the IOM also reports that 2,878 migrants have died in 2015 as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean. How many Nigerians were among the lot? We don’t know..
