According to a Vanguard report, a human
trafficking syndicate based in Delta State has
reportedly abducted over 40 Nigerian girls, mainly
below 18 years as s*x slaves for gold miners at a
mining field in Burkina Faso, a West African
country.
A rights activist in Warri, Delta State, Benefit
Orugbo, in a petition to the Area Commander,
Nigeria Police Force, Warri, said that the criminal
gang, which contracted a voodoo priest to
administer charms on the girls, seized one of the
girls, Miss Joy (surname withheld), aged 17 years,
from Egini community, Udu local government
area, Delta State, about six months ago.
Nigerian couple among evil gang: He said a
Nigerian couple was among the evil group and
urged the police to investigate the complaint and
bring all those found culpable to book to
unshackle the girls.
Orugbo said: “Miss Joy was in early January,
2017 coerced, detained, deceived and harboured
by one the syndicate alongside two other girls of
about her age at Ashaka Hotel, Owo-Olomu in
Ughelli South local government area of the state
for about four days within which period a member
of the gang took our client and other girls to a
juju shrine at Ughelli, where a man who claimed
to be bishop Oku, the priest of the shrine, bathed
and incised with a razor on the foreheads, chest
region and shoulder of our client and the other
girls and the incision rubbed with a substance
which appears to be charm.”
Trip to Cotonou: He said they took Joy and other
girls to Lagos from where they proceeded to
Cotonou and thereafter, Burkina Faso, where a
lady member “informed our client and the other
girls that they have been sold to her in order for
our client and the other girls to do prostitution.
”She further informed them that they would pay
her the sum of N2,000,000 (two million naira)
each and our client and the other girls pleaded
with her to send them back to Nigeria, as their
coming was not of their own freewill and that they
cannot do prostitution job as they have never
been in that kind of job before.”
The solicitor said the syndicate sold the girls to
the younger sister of a prominent Delta
businessman, who in turn disposed them to yet
another woman in Burkina Faso. The second
woman took them to the bush where a doctor
injected with a substance in their left armpit to
prevent them from getting pregnant.
"The second madam informed our client and the
other girls that the cost of sleeping with a man is
one deuxmille, which is equivalent to 2000 fcfa
and the madam forced our client and the other
girls to sleep with about 16 men a day with the
target of remitting nothing less than 6000
deuxmille a day or our client and the girls would
be beaten mercilessly and starved of food if they
fail to meet the daily target.
“Our client had to go through this awful
experience on a daily basis with about 40 other
girls in the bush as sex slaves to the miners since
she was forced into prostitution in Burkina Faso
until sometime in April 2017, when after so much
search for our client by her relatives, one Cynthia
informed our client’s grandmother, Mrs. Martha,
that she last saw our client with one Mrs. Rita
“Our client’s family mounted pressure on Rita and
her mother for the whereabouts and return by
them of our client and she was returned on the
22nd of April, 2017 to Lagos and she arrived at
Egini community on 23rd of April, 2017,” he
asserted.
Orugbo noted: “However, at the border of Benin
Republic and Nigeria, the persons returning our
client injected her with an unknown substance
without her consent.”
Appeal to Area Commander: His words: “In the
light of the forgoing, we herein pray you to
urgently investigate the above complaints and all
those found culpable brought to book and liberate
the 40 other or so girls of less than 18 years
used as sex slaves for gold miners in Burkina
Faso in order to rid the society and other
immediate neighbouring countries of persons, who
willfully involve themselves in trafficking in
persons, abduction and sex slavery, which are
offences prohibited by the relevant criminal laws
in Nigeria.”
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