In this report, VICTOR AYENI writes about the devious tactics deployed by human traffickers to deceive vulnerable women and children and force them into sex slavery in the country and other parts of the world.
The infamous trafficker dubbed as the ‘most wanted Nigerian’ on the list of 100 dangerous fugitives in Italy, Jeff Joy, had her wrists handcuffed as Italian law enforcement officers gripped each of her arms.
In a viral video released by security operatives, Jeff Joy, whose real name is Charity Omoruyi, limped with each step as she was led towards a vehicle by the Italian police and operatives of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons in Abuja.
The former Nigerian prostitute was garbed in a long traditional flowing gown patterned with brown and grey oval designs with a black veil wrapped around her head.
Arrested in June 2022, Omoruyi, who was one of the leaders of a vast network of human traffickers operating in Nigeria, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, was extradited to Italy by the order of the Federal High Court in Abuja.
She arrived at the Ciampino airport in Rome on March 8, 2023, where she was taken away in a wheelchair by the police.
Hers was the first extradition under a treaty between the Government of Italy and the Federal Government, which came into force in 2020.
The Italian police disclosed that Omoruyi had been tried in Italy and sentenced to 13 years in prison for running a prostitution ring and trafficking women to the country.
Who is Charity Omoruyi?
Saturday PUNCH gathered that Omoruyi (aka Jeff Joy) was born in 1975. NAPTIP, however, puts her age at 54.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, she arrived in Ravenna, Italy, in 1995, seeking asylum, which was granted to her.
The convict, who hails from Ego Local Government Area of Edo State, coordinated a trafficking ring that lured numerous girls and the destitute in Nigeria and forced them to become prostitutes in Italy and other parts of Europe, sometimes under duress.
Omoruyi’s illicit activities drew the attention of Italian authorities who placed her on the list of the 10 most wanted criminals in the country.
Following a tip-off, some members of her criminal network were arrested by the authorities, but before she could be prosecuted, Omoruyi absconded from Italy and fled to Nigeria.
Notwithstanding, she was tried and convicted in absentia after failing to comply with court summons.
Her trafficking case was one of many that were investigated by the UNODC in collaboration with the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights.
This alliance had brought together 10 European jurisdictions and Nigeria law enforcement agencies, who met to discuss and network on investigating and prosecuting organised criminal groups operating in Nigeria and Europe, including case consultations relevant to ongoing investigations.
Although Omoruyi had been on the run from the authorities since 2010, the arms of the law still reached beyond geographical boundaries to apprehend her.
NAPTIP, in a statement by its Press Officer, Mr Vincent Adekoye, explained that it took the combined effort of the Department of State Services, the Federal Ministry of Justice, and Italian authorities to fish out the notorious human trafficker.
Following the receipt of a formal request by the Italian authorities to extradite the trafficker with the assistance of the DSS, she was tracked and arrested in Benin, Edo State, in June 2022 and handed over to NAPTIP’s Benin Zonal Command and later transferred to NAPTIP’s headquarters in Abuja.
Omoruyi was under NAPTIP’s custody until her arraignment before Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court 2, Maitama, where a remand order was issued for her transfer to the Nigeria Custodial Centre, Suleja, pending the finalisation of the extradition process by the Federal Ministry of Justice.
Her extradition to Italy on March 8, 2023, was facilitated by Article 12 of the extradition treaty between Italy and Nigeria and signed in Rome in November 2016.
Edo State, according to NAPTIP, has the highest number of trafficked girls in 2017, with 19.6 per cent of the total number of victims across the country.
The agency secured convictions in 359 cases since it was created in 2003.
Sex slavery
Omoruyi is just one of the many Nigerian ‘madams’ who wield influence over the deplorable trade of trafficking young girls through the hostile Sahara desert or raging Mediterranean sea.
It was gathered that many of the individuals who lead trafficking rings often operate legal businesses that are used as fronts for their clandestine activities.
In 2017, the United Nations International Organisation for Migration noted that there had been nearly a 600 per cent increase in potential sex trafficking victims arriving in Italy since 2014 and it was estimated that 80 per cent of them were Nigerians.
A lady, simply identified as Loveth who hails from Edo State, described how she was tricked to Mali, along with her son, and forced to become a prostitute.
She said, “In Nigeria, I was approached by a woman who offered to take me to Mali. She told me I would get a job. But I did not know this was what I was getting into.
“When I arrived in Mali, the madam took my passport away and asked me to pay her one million CFA to get it back and the only way to pay her back was prostitution but I refused because of my son.
“After some time, I couldn’t pay my rent anymore. I could not travel back home. I did not have money and I did not have a passport. That’s why I gave in to her pressure.”
Loveth, however, did not get back her passport as she could not raise the full sum.
“I managed to pay half of the money before I escaped,” she added.
A vicious cycle of exploitation
According to the United Nations, the trafficking of Nigerian women for prostitution began in the late 1980s, when women were sent to Italy and forced into sex work.
Returning home, these women became the first generation of madams, who in turn made other young women suffer as they did.
In the case of Inyang Okokon, a trafficking survivor, she was lured from her home in Akwa Ibom State in 1999 by a madam who promised her a mouth-watering job in Italy.
During a SparkTalk lecture that she delivered at the European Pro Bono Forum, Okokon noted that the madams who recruited young girls for trafficking perpetuate the vicious cycle of exploitation.
She said, “I never imagined I would become a prostitute; it was something that disturbed me for a long time. One of the women in Nigeria had contacted me and said she had a restaurant in Italy and if I could work as a cook, I would be earning a lot of money but I would need to refund about £4,000 to £5,000 to her in exchange for all her expenses on me.
“I already had a restaurant in Nigeria and I was a good cook in my state. I had to sell off my restaurant and went along with her proposal. But when I came here, they sold me to another madam, who is a leading trafficker.
“Most of these traffickers were victims of trafficking before and when they finished their payments, they had their liberty and then bought other women and continued to exploit them as well.
“This woman bought me for £15,000 and I needed to pay her £45,000. I started the profession because there was nowhere to run to and they instilled much fear in me.
“Every day, I was made to swear to an oath that I would never run away or report my madam to the police. This continued until I got in touch with the people I knew could help me.”
Okokon noted that trafficking rings were often organised and they actively recruited young women to work as prostitutes in European countries under the guise of job offers.
“This trafficking ring was much organised in Nigeria such that they had ‘searchers’ who would go into the villages, salons, shops, markets, supermarkets, and even schools. They would talk to girls and convince them to travel abroad.
“They promise to take them to Europe, get them good jobs, and tell them that within six months, they will refund their money.
“In exchange, they will demand between £30,000 and £50,000 from each person. I want to let you know that you will work more than thrice this amount because the traffickers will get every bit of expense from you.
“You will be the one to pay for their houses, rent, feeding, clothes – everything, before they will now write down the money for you and if you ask them questions, they will terminate the one that they wrote before,” she added.
A fact sheet published by the Pathfinders Justice Initiative describes human trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery that involves the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain and estimates it to be a $150bn global industry.
“Two-thirds of this figure ($99bn) is generated from commercial sexual exploitation, while another $51bn results from forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture, and other economic activities,” the report said.
According to the United Nations, the smuggling route from East, North, and West Africa to Europe generates $150m in annual profits, translating to $35bn globally.
Internal trafficking
Saturday PUNCH gathered that both external and internal human trafficking is rife in Nigeria, particularly the trafficking of children.
NAPTIP statistics from 2019 to 2022 indicate that 61 per cent of human trafficking in Nigeria happens internally, while 39 per cent is from cross-border.
In most cases, internal trafficking often takes the form of recruitment and transportation of children from rural areas to urban and city centres for different forms of labour under exploitative conditions.
For instance, in December 2022, a woman, identified simply as Madam Success, was arrested in Anambra State over her alleged role in luring four female pupils into prostitution.
The students, aged between 13 and 15, were lured from Akwa Ibom State to Agbor, Delta State, after the suspect deceived them with employment offers as sales girls.
The girls were allegedly put in a brothel and made to sleep with at least five men daily.
In July 2022, NAPTIP officials also arrested a woman, Blessing Iniedem, for allegedly tricking a 16-year-old-girl into prostitution at a brothel in the Mile three axis of Port Harcourt.
Iniedem, who reportedly ran a brothel, was said to have brought the teenage girl from Akwa Ibom State under the guise of taking her on holiday.
The Women Consortium of Nigeria, on its website said, “For decades, children predominantly from rural communities such as Shaki in Oyo State, many parts of Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Benue and Kwara states have been recruited by traffickers and trafficked to cities like Lagos, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Kano, Calabar and Port-Harcourt.
“The modes of recruitment range from voluntary placement of children with traffickers by parents or guardians to have the children transported to cities for labour.
“Sometimes, the children out of peer pressure, curiosity for city life and/ or lack of alternative opportunities, seek out the traffickers on their own. Occasionally, the children are kidnapped by the traffickers or their agents.”
Not limited to Europe
The 2022 United States State Department of Trafficking in Persons report identified Nigeria as a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking.
In 2009, UNODC estimated that 3,800 to 5,700 sex trafficking victims each year came from West Africa, with Nigeria constituting the main source country.
Saturday PUNCH gathered that although Europe is the main destination of trafficking from Nigeria, victims are also shipped to Central Asia, Middle East or North Africa.
A survivor, Blessing, described her harrowing ordeal when she sought what she thought were greener pastures in Libya.
She said, “I was told about this job in Libya by my mother’s elder sister. She did not tell me what I was going to do there; she just told me that her first son’s friend will take me to Italy. As we set on the journey, the Arab man that was driving us to Agadez (Niger), raped all of us, including me. It was there I became pregnant.
“When I was travelling through the desert to Libya, I spent three months in the desert. I drank water from a well that had a dead body inside and also drank my urine due to thirst. I was kidnapped and raped.
“While I was in tranke (kidnapped), my abductors forced me to call my mother to send them money to release me. My mother sent them N1.5m and I was released.”
Another trafficking survivor, who simply gave her name as Becky, noted that her journey took her across Niger and Libya, where she was held in a detention centre for months due to her inability to clear her trafficking fare.
She narrated to CNN how she was repeatedly raped by her jailers, who she said were Libyan militias.
“It was the worst experience of my life. You scream, you shout, but nobody comes to the rescue. They rape you, they do whatever they want to do to you, you have no say, you have no choice,” she said.
Deadly oaths
Findings by Saturday PUNCH also indicated that aside from trafficked Nigerian women being forced to pay large sums of money in order to be released from the chattel, they are also taken to voodoo priests who bind them under deadly oaths or force them to partake in voodoo rituals that prohibit them from exposing their traffickers to the authorities.
The victims are warned that if they ever divulged the names, physical identities, or locations of their traffickers or escaped from the trafficking ring, the spiritual forces behind the voodoo rites would unleash disastrous consequences on them.
In a documentary by Deutsche Welle, a trafficked victim whose name was given as Blessing, said, “My madam is in Italy. If I do not pay my madam, the juju would kill me. So I have to pay her the money. When I pay her, I’m free. If I didn’t pay her, the juju would start following me everywhere I go. The thing would cause madness. It is real.”
Another trafficked victim, Nadege, said in an emotion-laden tone, “Imagine you take an oath, you lie down inside a casket, a coffin, which means that if you break the rules, you will now come back to this coffin. It’s so powerful.”
A psychologist, Kolawole Afolabi, told Saturday PUNCH that traffickers frequently exploited African cultural beliefs to solidify the control they wield over their victims.
He said, “These human traffickers deliberately use traditional oath-taking rituals as a powerful means of controlling their victims. This tactic reaches to the depths of their psychological vulnerability and when you combine this with other factors, it is not hard to see why many women and children are rendered vulnerable.
“The traffickers simply exploit the cultural beliefs they know their victims are familiar with and deploy them as a weapon to silence them. This is why they strategise on luring young women from rural areas where they know such beliefs resonate more powerfully and are deeply entrenched in their psyches.
“In climes such as Europe or America, you will notice that the victims native to these continents are rarely held hostage by trafficking with such oaths. The environment is different. But in Africa, they exploit African traditional religion to instill fear and subservience in their victims.
“Once the victims can beat that malignant fear of voodoo and realise that since they are on the cause of doing what is right by seeking freedom from evil, the hold of that belief on their psyche is weakened. They would also need professional counselling in order to properly heal.”
Monarch’s curse
On March 9, 2018, the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II, placed a curse on anyone who abets human trafficking in the state. This move followed a CNN investigation that highlighted Edo State’s central role in sex trafficking.
The monarch also revoked the oaths and curses that kept victims of trafficking from reporting their traffickers to the authorities.
He stated, “You native doctors whose businesses are to subject people to the oath of secrecy and encouraging this evil act in the land, you have to repent; stop doing it. This is not a joke and if you do not repent, you have to wait for the repercussion.
“We want to use this medium to tell those who are under any oath of secrecy that they are now free. We revoke the oath today.”
Speaking on why Edo State has been a base of human trafficking, the Public Relations Officer of the Edo State Task Force against Human Trafficking, Kelly Ehanire, told Saturday PUNCH that as long as many youths desired a better life outside the country and were desperate to travel by any means, trafficking would continue.
He said, “Edo State has been a place that has been in the spotlight of international organisations over human trafficking. I think about 30 per cent of human trafficking victims out of the country was estimated to be from the state and that is why the Edo State Taskforce Against Human Trafficking, was set up and we have recorded over 5,000 returnees.
“There is a people factor behind the increase in illegal migration. Many youths want a better life and they are convinced that starting life anew can only come when they leave the shores of the country, so they are desperate to travel. Many of them are trafficked to Libya, Mali, or any other country.”
Ehanire added that although the curse pronounced by Ewuare II reduced human trafficking in the state, some still operated underground.
“After the Oba of Benin pronounced the curse, the crime was reduced and its perpetrators sought other means, but these trafficking rings are still operating not only here but in other parts of the country,” he added.
Stakeholders call for more measures
A legal practitioner, Omotoso Aanuoluwapo, said trafficked survivors need more awareness to come forward and report in order to get more offenders arrested.
“Human trafficking is a criminal offence in Nigeria; anyone caught would be arrested, tried and if found guilty punished according to the offence committed.
“The High Court has powers to impose the penalties provided for according to Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act.
“Some legal practitioners have passion for cases like this, though for instance, the Legal Aid Council, and the International Federation of Women Lawyers are well known to handle cases like this.
“The Child Rights Act 2003 also criminalises child trafficking, but as of 2020, only 25 of the country’s 36 states, including the Federal Capital Territory, have enacted the law. So, more needs to be done in this regard,” Aanuoluwapo said.
On his part, Mr Olaide Ajayi, a worker with an Abuja-based non-governmental organisation that deals with human trafficking and child labour, explained that government at all levels needed to do more in order to curb the crime.
He said, “Many women and girls have been trafficked and forced into various forms of child labour and prostitution and it has been estimated that about 750,000 to one million persons are trafficked annually in Nigeria. This has been caused by corruption, globalisation, gender inequalities, unfavourable economic conditions, unemployment, and underdevelopment.
“Human trafficking is a form of human slavery and the government has a major role to play in order to eradicate or minimise trafficking. This has to start with the local governments; they need to provide support and assistance to current victims and implement development strategies that address the root causes of trafficking. All these should be done in alignment with international standards.
“Also, the Federal Government, particularly the Office of Health and Human Services, need to develop programmes and policies that will reach vulnerable populations. The Trafficking Victims Act 2000 calls for a task force to monitor and combat trafficking and coordinate anti-trafficking efforts among agencies.
“The victims also need to be empowered in order for them to regain their confidence and reintegrate them into society through medical help, psychological support, legal assistance, shelter, and everyday care. The Federal Government also needs to implement programmes to protect survivors of human trafficking.”
