Edo teenager rejects prostitution after Mali trafficking scam

Eighteen-year-old Faith Joseph, on Thursday, narrated how she refused to engage in prostitution in Mali after traffickers tricked her into believing that she was going to work in a supermarket in Lagos.

Joseph said she was working as a maid in Afuze, Owan East Local Government Area of Edo State, when she was offered a salesgirl job in Lagos State.

However, her parents raised an alarm when they discovered that their daughter had been trafficked to Mali.

She was eventually rescued and returned to Nigeria with the support of the Edo State Migration Agency.

Speaking in Benin, Joseph said she rebuffed all attempts to lure her into the Illicit job when she arrived in Mali, telling her host in Mali that she had been told she was going to work in Lagos as a salesgirl.

She said, “I was told I would work in Lagos State as a salesgirl. When we arrived in Lagos at night, we slept in a hotel. The following day, we went to Cotonou in the Republic of Benin, where I complained that we had passed Lagos State. She (the trafficker) said we had not reached our destination.

“In Cotonou, she handed me over to a driver who took me to Mali the next day. In Mali, they took me to one lady, but I saw that it was not what I was told. What they are doing there is prostitution, and I told her I could not do it.

I said I wanted to go back home. She said I could not go back until they brought another person to replace me. I was in Mali for three weeks before I ran to the police station.

“Life was not easy for me in Mali because I refused to do prostitution. Some people were giving me money to eat until I was rescued.”

The Director General of the agency, Lucky Agazumah, urged Edo residents to report cases of human trafficking.

Agazumah said Governor Monday Okpebholo was resolute to tackle human traffickers and ensure they were prosecuted.

Recalls that after several years of illegal migration to Europe through Libya, the Edo State Government under Godwin Obaseki criminalised such trips as most of the girls taken outside the country found themself being forced into prostitution by their traffickers.

In 2018, the Oba of Benin, His Royal Majesty, Ewuare II, forced native doctors in the state to revoke curses placed on victims.

The oaths which are often administered by native doctors engaged by the agents were reversed with the Oba placing a curse against anyone who continued to engage in the practice.