“I can make sure she never sleeps well or has peace of mind until she pays what she owes,” said the 39-year-old spiritual priest known in his neighborhood as “Doctor”. “Something in her head will keep telling her: ‘Go and pay!'” Juju is a potent ingredient in a cocktail of coercion that keeps thousands of Nigerian women and girls in sex slavery in Europe, mostly in Italy, after making the treacherous journey across North Africa and the Mediterranean in search of better lives. Combined with crippling debt and threats of violence, it helps perpetuate a cycle of exploitation in which many victims then become perpetrators, returning to Nigeria as “madams” to recruit more girls, police and rights groups say. In Edo State – a southern Nigerian hub for human trafficking – many girls begin their journey into prostitution willingly. Most have little clue of the nightmare to follow. Some even visit native doctors like Elemian of their own accord, hoping juju will help them prosper while selling sex in Italy. “It’s not how hard a person works that determines how much money she will make,” he said, showing off his new mobile phone and modern bungalow, which stands out amid his neighbors’ mud huts. These trappings of wealth are all funded by grateful clients from Italy, he said.
According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), more than nine in 10 Nigerian women smuggled to Europe come from Edo, a predominantly Christian state with a population of 3 million. Traffickers in Nigeria are exploiting Europe’s migration crisis, moving girls to lawless Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean to Italy, anti-slavery activists say. “Edo women started going to Italy to buy gold and beads in the early 1980s and saw a thriving market in prostitution,” said Kokunre Eghafona, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Benin and a consultant researcher for the International Organization for Migration (IOM). “They came back and started taking family and friends.” These women, known as “madams” – who make up around half of Nigeria’s traffickers, UNDOC says – are mostly former victims-turned-brokers who prey on others to escape prostitution. Many such traffickers believe they are being helpful rather than doing harm, calling themselves sponsors rather than madams, a more positive title, according to Eghafona. Speaking from her home in the city of Warri with her one-year-old son crying in the background, madam “Mama Anna” said that with so many girls looking for traffickers to take them to Italy, she no longer needed to deceive or trick them into going. “Some ask me what they will do when they get there,” said Mama Anna, boasting of her reputation as a broker who sends interested girls to Italy to work for her older sister, also a madam. “I tell them they will go and hustle,” she said. “They ask: ‘What kind of hustle?’ I tell them. Some refuse to go, others agree.”
According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), more than nine in 10 Nigerian women smuggled to Europe come from Edo, a predominantly Christian state with a population of 3 million. Traffickers in Nigeria are exploiting Europe’s migration crisis, moving girls to lawless Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean to Italy, anti-slavery activists say. “Edo women started going to Italy to buy gold and beads in the early 1980s and saw a thriving market in prostitution,” said Kokunre Eghafona, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Benin and a consultant researcher for the International Organization for Migration (IOM). “They came back and started taking family and friends.” These women, known as “madams” – who make up around half of Nigeria’s traffickers, UNDOC says – are mostly former victims-turned-brokers who prey on others to escape prostitution. Many such traffickers believe they are being helpful rather than doing harm, calling themselves sponsors rather than madams, a more positive title, according to Eghafona. Speaking from her home in the city of Warri with her one-year-old son crying in the background, madam “Mama Anna” said that with so many girls looking for traffickers to take them to Italy, she no longer needed to deceive or trick them into going. “Some ask me what they will do when they get there,” said Mama Anna, boasting of her reputation as a broker who sends interested girls to Italy to work for her older sister, also a madam. “I tell them they will go and hustle,” she said. “They ask: ‘What kind of hustle?’ I tell them. Some refuse to go, others agree.”
her: ‘Go and pay!'”
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