By Nanji Nandang, JOS
Shortly before sunset on Wednesday, August 17th, 2022, as a heavy downpour fell on Shaka, a residential area in Jos, the capital city of Plateau State, North Central Nigeria, Kaka Mary*, 67, was rushing back home after working on her farm. She heard a voice, “Good afternoon Kaka (Kaka means grandmother in the local language), we are trying to locate Kaka Mary’s house. Please can you help us,” a Keke NAPEP (Tricycle taxi) rider asked shortly after stopping.
There were two young men and a pale-looking girl wearing hijab (head coverings worn by Muslim women). Kaka Mary scrutinized them before responding, she noticed the girl’s legs were swollen. The girl struggled to look up with gloomy wet eyes from the back seat of the tricycle where she was sitting. At that moment, she recognized the girl. “Vera (not her real name), is that you?” Kaka Mary exclaimed. She was frail and weak.
There were two young men and a pale-looking girl wearing hijab (head coverings worn by Muslim women). Kaka Mary scrutinized them before responding, she noticed the girl’s legs were swollen. The girl struggled to look up with gloomy wet eyes from the back seat of the tricycle where she lay down. At that moment, she recognized the girl. “Vera (not her real name), is that you?” Kaka Mary exclaimed.
The girl gave a weak smile as she tried to sit up. “Yes Kaka”
A photo of Vera’s leg
Vera, 14, was in Junior Secondary class 2 (8th Grade) when she went missing with five other girls from the community in 2021.
What Happened to Vera?
In December 2021, Kaka and the parents of the children filed a report at the Plateau State Central Intelligence Department (CID), Police Headquarters in Jos. but the department handed the case to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) when investigations showed that the girls were trafficked.
The NAPTIP Commander of Plateau State, Adole Alexander, said Jamila Muhammed was arrested for allegedly trafficking the girls to the Republic of Mali.
“Jamila said that one of her friends who is based in the Republic of Mali requested some girls to help her work at her restaurant,” Adole said.
Nigeria records high cases of human trafficking. In the Global Slavery Index released in 2018, the country ranks 32 out of 167 countries with the highest number of slaves. In the same vein, NAPTIP reported that the highest number of trafficked children in Nigeria, recently upgraded to a Tier 2 country on the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking In Persons Report, are girls between the ages of 12-17.
In recent times, NAPTIP has listed Benue and Plateau states as the transit point for child trafficking. Children in these two states are said to be trafficked to most parts of the country to serve as domestic help, farm assistants, and sex workers.
From house help jobs to sex slavery
Vera had just closed from school that sunny afternoon in December 2021, when her 15-year-old friend Nancy (not her real name) told her about a house help job that would earn them good money. She took Vera and four other girls that evening to see Madam Jamila at a hotel in Gada Biyu area of Jos.
“Madam Jamila took our pictures and kept us in a room that night. The next day, she handed us to a bus driver who took us to Lagos.” Vera says.
The driver dropped Vera and her friends at the location Jamila instructed in Lagos at about 9 pm. A woman was supposed to pick them up, but she didn’t come that night, so the girls slept at the park. Not long after Nancy informed Madam Jamila on the phone that they had arrived in Lagos, the woman came with about five heavy-built men in two trucks and ordered them to enter the trucks.
“I became very scared when they took all our phones. We traveled for five days without food. They only gave us soft drinks and biscuits. I was so afraid.” Vera explains.
They arrived in the Republic of Mali on the fifth day, and the girls were distributed to different women. Vera was handed to a woman who also hails from Plateau state in Nigeria. The woman took Vera through a dirty slum with a lot of lather houses (tent houses) and open drains.
“She said I must work hard to pay her 1.5 million francs because that was how much I owed her. But I didn’t collect money from her, so how can I owe her that huge amount? I cried all through the night.” Vera said as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
Vera was willing to work for her freedom, but when she was asked to sleep with men, she questioned the woman, “I was brought here for a house girl job, not this type of work please,” and that made the woman furious. Vera was punished for refusing to comply.
“After beating me and starving me for days, she made me sleep with more than six men a day,” Vera said in tears.
Nigerian law
It is estimated that about 12 million Nigerian children are forced into labor and it’s estimated that about 80% of Nigerian children in forced labor are victims of trafficking. A vast majority of these children, like Vera, are used for sexual exploration in and outside Nigeria.
The 2003 Child’s Rights Act pointed out that violence against children includes sexual exploitation, trafficking for different purposes, child labor, and maltreatment, amongst others. But this law has not been adopted as local laws in some states of the country.
Like Vera, many Nigerian children fall for the usual bait of a false promise of employment to earn money, then smuggled through the borders of the country, even though the government said it has formal written procedures to guide law enforcement, immigration, and social services personnel in the proactive identification of trafficked victims.
Victims are taken to various destinations as varied as the different syndicated gangs of traffickers. Some of the common routes are from Nigeria through neighboring countries, the Republics of Benin and Togo to Ghana or Mali, where orientation and change of identities are conducted for those traveling by air.
Kate (not her real name), 22, arrived in Jos from the Benin Republic on September 4th, 2022, through the help of NAPTIP.
The State Commander said Kate’s uncle filed a complaint on August 4, 2022, that his niece left home in Doemak, Quan-Pan Local Government area of Plateau State, in April this year for Abuja to visit a female friend.
“Though she did not identify the name and address of the friend, she kept in touch with her mum by phone. Sometime in May, she called to say she had been taken out of the country and didn’t know exactly where she was. The last communication with her family was through a foreign number, which is a Benin Republic number, and that led us to believe that she was in the Benin Republic,” Adole explained.
The agency said Kate was moved to Mali before they could intervene.
“We collaborated with an NGO in Mali to trace Kate, and that was how we worked for her return,” he added.
One of the legal instruments available in Nigeria is the 2003 Trafficking in Persons Law Enforcement and Administration Act, amended in 2005 and re-enacted in 2015. The law prescribes a penalty of five years imprisonment in addition to or with an option of a fine for labour trafficking, 10 years imprisonment for the trafficking of children for forced begging or hawking; and 10 years to life imprisonment for sex trafficking.
Others are Nigeria’s Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015 and the NANTIP Act.
In December 2021, Jamila was arrested and detained at the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps headquarters in Jos.
Adole said, “We granted Jamila bail because, under section 35 of the constitution of Nigeria, any person who is arrested by the law enforcement agency for the commission of a crime must be brought before the court within “24-48 hours. But the witnesses were in Mali.”
Freedom at last
Vera and other girls, who are mostly from Plateau state, do more domestic work in the afternoon before doing the major job at night.
But Vera was not productive because she was always falling ill, so she was sold to five different Madams, but her ill health grew worse.
“Most times I will refuse to go out for business intentionally, but my health also contributed to my unproductivity. My last madam was really angry. She said I was a waste, so she sent me back to my first madam, the Plateau state woman.”
“My first madam got a call one day from Madam Jamila, telling her that she was arrested by my parents, as she urged her to let me go. Since she was scared that I might die due to my health condition, Madam started planning my return to Nigeria.”
The woman gave Vera 23,147.39 West African CFA francs, which is equivalent to N15,000, to return home.
“When we got to a certain town in Mali, the driver said I had exhausted the 23,147.39 francs, so he threw me out of the car.” I sat there crying when one of my madam’s customers who knows me came. After telling him everything that happened, he gave me 6,424.6535 francs, an equivalent of N10,000,” she said.
Vera transported herself to Lagos, arriving the next day, but without money to continue the journey to Plateau state. So she stayed at the park the whole day.
“An unknown man took pity on me and paid N7,000 to a driver to bring me to Jos.” Vera said.
After arriving in Jos the next day, Vera tried locating her house in the Guratop area, but was told her grandmother had relocated to Shaka.
“The Keke man saw my condition and offered to help me find my grandma, I am so happy to reunite with my family,” she said.
Vera is currently on admission in a hospital in Jos.
With Vera’s arrival, NAPTIP said it is reopening the case by re-arresting Jamila and charging her to court.
