Nigeria Abroad
Hundreds of Nigerian women are being trafficked into prostitution in Burkina Faso’s gold mining camps—lured by traffickers who promise them jobs—where they end up with huge debts and no way out, an Associated Press investigation has found.
One of the victims, Blessing said she was brought to Burkina Faso purportedly to work in a hair salon. But once she arrived, the 27-year-old was drugged and beaten: her captors dragged her from one gold mine to the next, where she was forced to have sex with dozens of men.
She was told she would be killed if she tried to run away. “Nobody comes to your rescue,” she told investigators.
In December 2019, she finally had a chance to escape. With the help of residents, she and six other women left the encampment and walked to safety, ultimately ending up in a United Nations transit center for migrants in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou.
The investigators met nearly 20 Nigerian women who said they had been brought to Burkina Faso under false pretences and were forced into prostitution. They cited others with similar stories—others identified by pseudonyms to protect their safety, but who were verified through interviews with aid workers, lawyers, police, local anti-trafficking activists, health workers, a trafficker, and members of the Nigerian community in several towns throughout Burkina Faso.
According to the AP, people with knowledge of the trafficking industry say that most of the women come from Nigeria’s Edo state. Once in Burkina Faso, they are sent to work off debts in squalid conditions at or near small-scale gold mines.
Both Burkina Faso and Nigeria have signed the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, but neither country has finalized a joint plan on how to combat trafficking, AP reports. In addition to struggling with trafficking within its borders, Burkina Faso has been identified as a transfer point for trafficking women into other countries, according to reports from the US State Department.
One man arrested and detained by local authorities for trying to traffic three women across the Burkina Faso border into neighboring Mali told AP that he didn’t consider it human trafficking because, according to him, the women knew they would be working as prostitutes. “I feel somehow bad because it’s not a good job for them to do. They say it’s just a voluntary decision,” said the 48-year-old from Nigeria.
He told AP that he had bought the women for $270 (€225) each in Benin and was planning to sell them for more than twice that to a Nigerian madam in Mali. In 2019 he had done the same with two other women.
‘I want to survive’
In Secaco, a makeshift mining town tucked behind uneven dirt roads, trafficked women live in small, ragged “huts” made from plastic sheeting. They have sex on thin mattresses with 30 men a night, trying to “earn” their freedom.
27-year-old Mimi, a Nigerian lady, said recruiters told her she would have a job to support her three children when she arrived in Burkina Faso. Two months later, she still owed her madam nearly €1,000. “It’s a jungle and I want to survive,” she said.
Before being forced into sex work with miners, another Nigerian, Love thought she would be working in a boutique and earning enough to support her 13-year-old daughter. “In Nigeria, there are a lot of graduates but no jobs,” Love explained.
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