Human trafficking in Nigeria: “Every night I cry before I fall asleep”

Four years ago, 19-year-old Timipriye’s dreams were shattered from one day to the next. In 2018, her father’s younger brother abducted her from Bayelsa in southern Nigeria under the pretense of giving her a better life. “One of my aunts came to me and said that she wanted to take me to Lagos, where I would be sent to university,” Timipriye told DW. “My parents, who have many children to look after, agreed.”

Her parents and ten siblings lived in poverty, and her two-year-old niece had just died of malnutrition. But the supposedly nice offer of the aunt was a trap. “I was brought to Lagos by my uncle not to take care of me but because they were having triplets,” said Timipriye. “They needed someone to take care of their children.”

No soap, no phone

Timipriye never went to school. Every day she wakes up at 3am to bathe the triplets, feed them and get them ready for preschool. “I’m locked in the building. I often don’t sleep until around 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.,” she says. If she doesn’t complete her tasks quickly enough, there are penalties: when she didn’t get out of the car fast enough, her aunt slammed the car door on her fingers.

Timipriye often only bathes with water and owns only one pair of underpants, which she washes every night with hidden detergent. “Every night I cry before I go to sleep. I can’t even call my parents because I don’t have a phone. Even if I had one, I don’t have money for airtime and I’m not allowed to make calls,” she tells DW.

Girls are often victims

Timipriye’s story is not unique: According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, around 4,800 cases of human trafficking were registered in sub-Saharan Africa between 2016 and 2019, more than half of the cases involving children in West Africa alone.

They are trafficked for many purposes, from domestic service as at Timipriye, to sexual exploitation, use as child soldiers, organ harvesting and even forced surrogacy on “baby farms” where they are impregnated and forced to give birth. “Exploitation is the common denominator of human trafficking,” said Daniel Atokolo, director of investigations and surveillance at the National Agency for the Prohibition of Human Trafficking (NAPTIP) in Abuja.

Most victims of child trafficking in Nigeria are girls between the ages of 12 and 17. According to Nigeria’s Anti-Trafficking Agency, it is estimated that only two percent of trafficking victims are taken out of the country.

While international organizations largely agree that Nigeria has increased its efforts to combat human trafficking, the scale of the problem is still enormous. It was estimated that nearly 1.4 million people were living in modern slavery in Nigeria in 2018, according to the Walk Free Foundation, an international human rights group that publishes a global slavery index. The perpetrators, on the other hand, are rarely caught. A US government report recorded just 36 human trafficking convictions in Nigeria in 2021.

Familiar Perpetrators

When night comes, Timipriye’s fear grows. It’s her uncle’s fault. “My uncle tries to sleep with me, he comes at night and knocks on my door,” she tells DW. “And when I try to prevent that by locking my door from the inside, he starts treating me badly. He says never to lock the door when I’m sleeping.” Timipriye becomes restless as she talks. “My uncle watches me when I’m bathing, and when he knows I’m done bathing, he storms into the room without knocking.”

According to the International Organization for Migration, around two-thirds of child trafficking cases worldwide involve family and friends in the early stages. They plan to exploit the victims, usually for material gain.

Like Timipriye, Ivie was abducted in 2018 by someone well known to her family. An acquaintance promised the then adventurous 15-year-old to enable her to get an education in Europe and to find a job as a babysitter so that she could earn something while she was at school.

But there was one condition: she shouldn’t tell anyone, not even her parents. Ivie dropped out of secondary school without her parents’ knowledge while her acquaintance was preparing her passport and other items needed for the trip.

rape and sex work

Finally, Ivie flew out of Nigeria – and the nightmare began. At the first stop in Mali, the acquaintance told Ivie that she had to earn money to continue her journey. And the only work available was sex work. Ivie was still a virgin. “Initially she thought she could delay, but after two days without eating, she knew she had no choice. She had to comply,” Ivie’s current guardian and supervisor Felicia (not her real name) told DW.

The acquaintance arranged for a man to rape Ivie, something that severely traumatized the teenage girl. “Ivie is a young girl who wanted to make something of herself; she wanted to improve her destiny. She thought she would go to school in Europe and become a babysitter,” says Felicia. “She never thought she would become a commercial sex worker.”

Ivie reached Italy, and learned that she was not just dealing with the acquaintance, but with an organized cartel. Besides her, ten other girls worked as sex workers for the ring. But Ivie managed to escape: she confided in a client who took her to Catholic nuns who helped her return to Nigeria.

“Don’t trust your child to anyone”

Babatunde Fadipe, psychiatrist at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), explains that victims of human trafficking often struggle with emotional and psychological problems for years afterwards. This includes mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder, fear, anger, anxiety and depression. Many survivors are often left alone because in many African countries there is often a lack of psychologists, psychiatrists and financial means.

Timipriye is too afraid to leave her uncle’s family. He’s a lawyer and a powerful person, she says. She secretly met with DW at a neighbor’s house while her aunt and uncle were away and mustered up the courage to tell her story in hopes of saving other children from human trafficking.

She also has a message for all parents: “Don’t trust your child to anyone!”

Adapted from the English by Silja Fröhlich.

Editor’s Note: Details about Timipriye and Ivie are not disclosed in this article for their protection.