Nigeria: Women Sacrificed to Sex Trade
BENIN CITY, NIGERIA -- A family friend arranged for Gloria to leave Nigeria to work as a prostitute in Italy. Blessing was approached by an aunt. A next-door neighbor organised the trip for Adeyinka.
Thousands of women in southern Nigeria's Benin City -- a run-down port of crumbling buildings and potholed streets where power cuts are frequent and jobs scarce -- are encouraged by their desperate families to sell their bodies abroad.
"Our friend came to my house and said he could help me travel to Europe and make a lot of money. I wanted to help my mother. We are poor," says Gloria, who was 19 at the time and among the youngest of a family of 19 children.
She ended up in Italy after a harrowing journey across the Sahara during which several women died of hunger and thirst.
She arrived in debt, and by the time she was deported back to Nigeria after eight months working on the streets, she was still penniless, having only managed to pay some of the $35,000 she owed her new madam.
"Those years were wasted. When I think about it I feel very desperate," said Gloria, tears smudging her make-up.
Her story is sad but not uncommon in this city.
Trafficking women for prostitution became a problem in Benin City in the mid-1980s when free-market economic reforms led to massive job losses and impoverished many Nigerians...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT WashingtonPost.com
Thousands of women in southern Nigeria's Benin City -- a run-down port of crumbling buildings and potholed streets where power cuts are frequent and jobs scarce -- are encouraged by their desperate families to sell their bodies abroad.
"Our friend came to my house and said he could help me travel to Europe and make a lot of money. I wanted to help my mother. We are poor," says Gloria, who was 19 at the time and among the youngest of a family of 19 children.
She ended up in Italy after a harrowing journey across the Sahara during which several women died of hunger and thirst.
She arrived in debt, and by the time she was deported back to Nigeria after eight months working on the streets, she was still penniless, having only managed to pay some of the $35,000 she owed her new madam.
"Those years were wasted. When I think about it I feel very desperate," said Gloria, tears smudging her make-up.
Her story is sad but not uncommon in this city.
Trafficking women for prostitution became a problem in Benin City in the mid-1980s when free-market economic reforms led to massive job losses and impoverished many Nigerians...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT WashingtonPost.com
posted by Sarah G. at 9:56 PM
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