Icir Nigera
By Jennifer UGWA
ON a breezy evening, January 6 2021, five young girls and one boy walked briskly behind Madame Joy as she led the way to a motor park to catch a night bus due to depart from Makurdi, the capital of the northern state of Benue, in Nigeria, for Kaima in Kwara state, in the western part of the country. Anyone observing the group could assume that they were off to school as each child clutched a backpack containing clothes and a few essentials.
Barely 72 hours earlier, Madame Joy hardly knew any of them by their names. She visited several camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Benue, selling the colorful tale of offering job opportunities to “pretty” girls in her grocery stores in Kwara state to assist their families financially. She found these six persons at an IDP camp3 in Daudu.
Her real name is Nguamo Joy. By day, she poses as the owner of a beer parlor in Kaima, which serves as the base of her sex trafficking business. Daudu camp officials were recruited by Madame Joy to convince the children’s families that they would be safe and would be able to start sending money home in a matter of months.
According to a 2017 report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), human trafficking earns roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers—a lucrative venture for people like Madame Joy. Women and girls in IDP camps are especially vulnerable, lured by the shiny assurances of lucrative employment as domestic workers, waitresses, or maids in hotels.
Five of the girls were being trafficked to work as prostitutes while the boy was supposed to serve as a barman in their new destination.
