10/21/2018 How a Nigerian state turns the page for trafficked women - The Hindu

WOMEN IN ACTION

How a Nigerian state turns the page for trafficked women

Osagie Otabor
NOVEMBER 27, 2017 01:03 IST
UPDATED: NOVEMBER 25, 2017 11:45 IST

Sex traf cking has become endemic in this south-eastern Nigerian state of Edo, in
spite of international and national efforts to stop it. Determined to turn things around,
the governor is now trying a “home-grown solution.”

Edo, one of Nigeria’s 36 states, has practically become synonymous with sex trafficking. Last
August, Edo state governor Godwin Obaseki said he had had enough. He announced that the
appointment of a high-level task force to find solutions to this scourge.
It’s an old and intractable problem rooting back to the 1980s. At the time, Edo women would
travel to Italy to pursue commercial opportunities, but when things went badly, some resorted
to prostitution. A few even went on to become madams.
Since then, a number of international instruments have been adopted to fight trafficking,
notably the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons,
especially Women and Children (UNTP). Nigeria signed the agreement in 2000 and has passed
its own anti-trafficking legislation, which sets forth clear penalties for the trafficking of
human beings. Edo state too has adopted laws to stem this practice, and NGOs have been
working to help victims for nearly two decades.
Yet none of this helped Naomi Otoijuamu, whose elder brother was involed in trafficking her
to Russia. “The humiliation was much in Russia. My mum used to call me often to find out
how I was coping. I told her I wanted to come home, but she insisted I pay back the money
used to traffick me first. I paid about US$23,000 to the trafficker, and I fell sick immediately. In
a day, I slept with about 17 men on average. I have been very sick since I came back. I stayed in
Russia for four years.”
There are thousands of Noami Otoijuamus. Numerous studies have been written to elucidate
the difficulties of solving this problem, with poverty being labelled as the leading cause. But
these reports identify many other factors as well, all of which reinforce one another.

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Among the most-cited culprits are lack of education, which makes young girls more
susceptible to being tricked by false promises of easy money, and cultural biases against
women and girls, which contribute to gender-based poverty and a willingness to do anything
to break out of it. Corruption is also fingered for contributing to poverty in this resource-rich
nation and for making it easy for traffickers to avoid prosecution. Families are often complicit,
as they see this as their only way out of poverty. Then there are traditional practices such as
Juju, or voodoo, which are often used to frighten victims into silence, making it hard to
prosecute their traffickers.

Governor Obaseki has decided to attack the problem. His new Edo State Anti-Human
Trafficking Task Force has been charged with finding “home-grown solutions.” It is made up
of representatives of government ministries, departments and agencies; security agencies;
NGOs; the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP); and
religious and traditional institutions.

Obaseki challenged the task force to come up with new ways to enforce the federal
government’s trafficking laws within the state and to draw up a comprehensive action plan to
help reintegrate victims of the illicit trade back into society. This could include training—as
well as potential victims who might be lured by promises of greener pastures—in various
trades, and then providing graduates with grants to help them start their businesses.

Clamping down on offenders is also part of his plan. “It has been suggested that a special court
be established in the state to prosecute perpetrators,” the governor said. “We are losing our
young people to this negative trend, and we must make human trafficking a thing of the past
in the state.”
In a recent visit to Edo, Denmark’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Torben Getterman, said her
government supports Governor Obaseki’s initiatives. Denmark has witnessed a spike in
human trafficking from Nigeria, and the Ambassador pledged her country’s readiness to
collaborate with the state government in tackling this issue.

Meanwhile, valiant NGOs will continue to wage their uphill battle. Idia Renaissance, Prisoners
Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), and the Initiative for Youth Awareness on
Migration, Immigration, Development and Reintegration (IYAMIDR) all work to deter human
trafficking and to help victims reintegrate society.

The most well known is Idia Renaissance, founded in 1999 by Eki Igbinedion, who was then
the First Lady of Edo State. She has rehabilitated hundreds of trafficked victims and helped
potential victims, setting up a centre where they are trained in new skills. Some four to five
hundred candidates now receive certificates and diplomas every year, and Idia Renaissance has
begun extending microcredits to graduates interested in starting small businesses.
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The fact that Igbinedion has met with so much resistance is indicative of just how daunting
the challenges will be for the governor’s new task force. She has frequently been the target of
hostility on the part of victims and their families, who initially see her as depriving them of an
opportunity to make a lot of money abroad, even when they know full well what doing so
entails.
Yet Igbinedion doggedly persists, giving at least some young Edo women a livelihood—and a
newfound sense of dignity.

This article was originally published in The Nation

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