Lagos — It is tagged the third most lucrative organised crime in the world. Africa is in its grip. Nigeria is in its jaws. This is the story of how thousands of Nigerian girls are sold into sexual slavery. Anyone who bypasses Rosaline Giwa on the way will not throw a second look, except perhaps, to appreciate her unaided African beauty. A little interaction thereafter will reveal a stern, confident character. A first look will not reveal a loaded heart, too weighty with unpleasant adventures for a 25-year-old.

When TheNEWS met Rosaline, it was revealed she was an 'Italian been-to' (now a popular slogan). Formerly a year-two student of the Delta State University, Abraka, Rosaline left school, for according to her, a short period for the lure of 'come work abroad.' A friend in the same school told Rosaline how her blood brother, a Paris-based and popular wealthy businessman from Abraka, could facilitate her emigration to Paris where she would earn a lot of money doing some jobs. Rosaline told TheNEWS: "He told me he has two supermarkets, one in Paris and another in Italy. He said his sister likes me so much and has told him my financial condition and that's why he has decided to help me. We both agreed I would work in his supermarket in Paris."

Within one week, Rosaline's travel documents were ready and she travelled to Paris where she began work as a sales supervisor in a supermarket. "Two weeks later, the man called me and said I would have to go to his second shop in Italy where there is an urgent need for a hand. I was surprised but there was nothing I could do. He said I would be received at the airport by his wife who runs his supermarket in Italy."

It was in Italy that events began to unfold at a startling pace. Rosaline said she got the shock of her life when after two days of salesmanship, the supposed wife called her and made some startling revelations. "At first, she collected all my travel documents and told me I don't belong to the supermarket but that I will have to be doing some 'street business'..." Totally perplexed, her sudden burst of stuttering protests were met with further instructions: "Too late, I realised I have been tricked. I found it difficult to believe that my friend would do that kind of thing. And his brother surprised me too because this was somebody who had always related to me as a sister."

Rosaline thereafter planned an escape which worked. In her flight, she met an Italian to whom she explained her predicament. The man, a divorcee, took her in to work as a nanny to his three-year-old daughter. Six months later, Rosaline, who rarely went out for fear of the police was confronted with what she feared most. She ran into policemen who demanded for her papers. With nothing to show, she was bundled into a car where she stayed for about a month before she was eventually deported to Nigeria.

The story of Rosaline is just one out of the thousands of Nigerian girls who are on record to have been exported out of the country for the booming international prostitution market. Rosaline's decision to shun the prostitution business in Italy was probably informed by the educational environment from which she hails. And she was lucky in flight. But Juliana, another returnee whom this magazine encountered was not as lucky.

From an agidi (pap) seller in her rustic village of Ema, a village on the Benin-Abuja route, Juliana underwent a complete metamorphosis. Suddenly, an 'aunty' she scarcely knew came in constantly from Benin City and had talks with her mother. On one particular occasion, she was told she would follow "Aunty Benin" to the city where she would work as a househelp.

Two weeks later, she began to hear talks about her going 'abroad' to work. By the third week, her mother came in from the village to bid her good-bye and counsel her on the need to co-operate with her aunt and be a good girl. Juliana arrived the city of Milano, Italy and was shown into a room with a giant bed and mirror-lined walls. She related to this magazine, how in the dead of night, she was woken up to 'service' a whiteman while 'Aunty Benin' watched. For her, there was no way of escape from the bizarre world of sexual slavery.

From then on, she was forced to hang in street corners in panties and overcoats, until she got to a stage where she lost count of the number of men she slept with in a day. Ten months later, she and some other girls in the trade were deported to Nigeria. Trafficking in women for sexual exploitation remains a ghoulish trend that has crept in and continued to assault the nation's sensibility.

Not many people were aware of the existence of the international sex ring until the media began featuring stories of scores of Nigerian girls being deported from European countries, especially Italy for prostitution. Since the first batch of girls were deported in March 1999, very unsettling revelations have unearthed this transnational crime, hitherto unknown in Nigeria.

But indications that Nigerian girls have been enmeshed in it for a long time emerged in the revelation of Rev. Father Don Oreste Benzi, president of the "Community Pope John XXIII," an NGO working with trafficked girls who told the first Pan-African Conference on trafficking organised by the Women and Child Trafficking Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) that "I have been meeting Nigerian girls in the street since 1990, girls who have been cheated and brought to Europe and Italy, girls who have been enslaved and forced into prostitution."

Nigeria as it is, happens to be the most 'donating' African country in the global sex industry which is said to be rapidly expanding. Mrs. Eki Igbinedion, told TheNEWS that available evidence reveals that the world is witnessing an ever growing population of consumers of sex. But maybe more than that is the huge amount of money that the business spins.

While the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) puts the worldwide annual turnover of business in the sex industry at between $6 billion and $12 billion, the UN puts it at precisely $7 billion. The organised Nigerian criminal world of sexual exploitation has also expanded courtesy of technological innovations in physical and electronic infrastructure and the increasing gap in economic development of countries.

The 1,116 girls that the Nigerian police said were deported into the country between March 1999 and September 2000 is just a tip of the iceberg. Nigeria accounts for about 70 per cent of the estimated 70,000 girls trafficked from African countries especially Ghana, Gabon, and Cote d'Ivoire. The destinations of the girls are usually to the European countries of Italy, Belgium, Holland, Spain, France and Germany.

Further available statistics revealed that Italy is usually the destination country for girls coming from Nigeria. Harold Koko, Minister/Counsellor at the Nigerian Embassy in Italy told this magazine that about 70 per cent of the trafficked Nigerian girls end up in Italy. Reverend Sister Eugenia Bonetti of Italy-based CARITAS, an NGO working with transnational prostitution and the Abuja-based WOTCLEF also disclosed that no fewer than 30,000 trafficked Nigerian girls are currently in Italy.

Their ages range between 15 and 25, although workers in the anti-trafficking crusade are showing concern over the new market demand of the traffickers for fresh blood between the ages of 12 and 14 years. This magazine gathered that before the girls leave the shores of the country, they and sometimes their parents are made to swear to fetish oaths, promising to co-operate in all ways and never to reveal the identity of traffickers.

Outside voodoo, this magazine also gathered that white garment churches have now become spiritual contractors to ensure safe delivery of the girls to their various destinations. An evangelist of the White Parish of Celestial Church of Christ (CCC), Benin City, is particularly fingered in this. Police sources in Benin, however, say though they may not have enough evidence to nail the evangelist, they are closing in fast on one of his wives, who is said to be involved in the trafficking business, in collaboration with a young and rich high chief in Benin.

When TheNEWS sought to speak with the evangelist, he fixed a one-month appointment since according to him, he is undergoing some 'spiritual exercise' which doesn't stand him in good stead to speak now. For many of the girls, the fear of the fiery ablutions and oaths they go through and swore to ensure they remain loyal to their madams-the trade barons. Police sources told this magazine they have often found very personal items of the girls on their traffickers.

These include head and pubic hairs, nails and cut straps from the girls' underwears, sealed in envelopes with each girl's names attached. Mrs. Titi Abubakar, founder of WOTCLEF, and many other anti-trafficking workers say their researches reveal that more than 80 per cent of trafficked girls never knew they would end up working as prostitutes in their destination countries. The carrot oft dangled at them is the lure of good money 'abroad' to be made from working as shop assistants, baby sitters, models, artists, farm helps, etc. The girls were usually transported to Europe by air. But as the trade gets exposed and immigration procedures got tighter, they resorted to journeying through a combination of land, air and water transport networks. Ndidi, another returnee who spoke to this magazine, followed her trafficker from Benin to Onitsha and then to Calabar where they travelled on water for six hours to Cameroun.

There, they boarded a plane to France. But she could not make the trip as suspicious airport authorities in Cameroun yanked her off the plane. She spent two months in a Camerounian cell before she was sent back to Nigeria. Rev. Bonetti lately recoiled at her sadness when news came to CARITAS that 17 Nigerian girls were among those who died when the vessel they were being trafficked capsized on the Mediterranean Sea near northern Morocco. This figure is aside the 116, Nigerian girls which according to ONU's figures, have been killed from 1994 to 1998. Scores of these girls are also said to have contracted the HIV virus while some others have developed full-blown AIDS.

Outside this, some other girls usually fall into the hands of perverts who subject them to sexual perversions such as masochism and making them sleep with dogs while they watch. Once the girls arrive in Italy, it is payback time to their sponsors. The girls are first made, before the trip, to sign some 'ridiculous documents and agreeing to amounts they must refund as their travelling expenses. They are thereafter 'sold' in 'market towns' like Livorno, Torino, Turin and Genova to madames and bosses. From then on, they become answerable to these new administrators. The selling price of an average girl from sponsor to madam is put at around $12,000.

The madam or boss on the other hand, wants about four times as much from the girl as dividend. This accounts for why the girls work round the weather servicing as many as 10 men in a day (morning and night) so as to quickly pay up the debt and become independent or at least personally have something to show that they work abroad. The Associazione Comunita Papa Giovanni XXIII in its research reveal that 5 per cent of the sex consumers (clients) are youngmen from between 16 and 25 years; 15 per cent of them between 26 and 25 while 80 per cent of them are over 35.

The world of the human traffickers has largely remained shadowy since its operation is similar to organised crimes like the mafia. Anti-trafficking campaigners and prosecutors worldwide have not had much success penetrating into gangs. For instance, witnesses (victims) rarely cooperate with the prosecution in a world where the trafficker has battered (in various ways) his victims to submission, secrecy, and silence. For Nigerian girls, the fear of 'juju' is the beginning of wisdom.

Although the Nigerian Police say they are hellbent on curbing, if not eradicating the networks of sex trafficking, no major breakthroughs have been recorded. The magazine learnt that absence of enabling laws to prosecute traffickers is a major setback for the police. Assistant Inspector-General of Police, FCID (Interpol), Mrs. O.O. Ojomo told TheNEWS in Abuja that "there is no legislation for human trafficking, although there are other laws under which we can try such crime, such as abduction, but with punishment not severe enough to cope with the excesses of human trafficking. But even within our limits, we are trying all our best to nip this problem in the bud."

The work of the police is, however, quite easier in Edo State where the Idia Renaissance lobbied for a law outlawing ransnational prostitution. This has made possible a court case involving two notable sponsors or traffickers: 'Madam Patience' and a prominent Benin High Chief, Arala Osula. Osula was in court in January 2001. He has been granted bail until the case comes up again next month. The chief, police sources disclosed, has his eldest son in Torino, Italy as a front. Osula has since been suspended from the palace of the Oba of Benin. Perhaps the greatest 'kill' by the police in recent time was the arrest of a Nigerian lady, 30-year-old Arianna Uzo Egwu by the New York Police. Egwu's prostitution ring, 'Glamour Roses,' advertised on the internet, according to the New York Post, nets $2 million annually. She has been charged with promoting prostitution and money laundering.

Nigeria's response to the increasing trafficking of its female population for sexual exploitation, has been criticised as inadequate. Prof. (Mrs.) O.O. Oloruntimehin of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, believes that until the government "makes a drastic pronouncement, such as making issue of human trafficking a policy-necessity and thereby creating widespread awareness, we will remain in the wood on this problem that is robbing womanhood of its glory."

The country, according to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hon. Dubem Onyia, prides herself as being a signatory to a number of conventions against trafficking in human beings. These include the Conventions on the Rights of the Child; the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation or Prostitution of Others; and the Protocol on Trafficking in Women and Children, amongst others. President Olusegun Obasanjo himself has reiterated his administration's determination to reduce the country's embarrassing level of poverty-a cardinal reason for prostitution.

Besides, an anti-trafficking bill sponsored by WOTCLEF is currently sitting at the National Assembly. When passed into law, the legislation will cater nationally for the prevention of trafficking, protection of the trafficked and the punishment of traffickers. Oloruntimehin reiterated the need for quick and precise intervention of government in the problem of women trafficking. And then, she recalls the warning of Rev. Benzi: "Do not let this great country be known in the world only as the country of prostitutes." Additional reports by Victor Ofure Osehobo and Femi Ipaye.