Similoluwa Sokunbi (Master’s student)
The experience of Adejoke is as harrowing as it is heart-breaking. She was lured by a false promise of ‘greener pastures’ overseas.
The young Nigerian lady ended up being a victim of human trafficking. She was chained to a bed in a dingy Libyan room and forced to have sex with close to 30 men in a day.
Adejoke explained that an impoverished background led her to survive by hawking water as a young girl before becoming an apprentice hair-stylist.
Adejoke, who is now 21 years old, went through this hell when she was just 19-year-old. She narrated her experience during a church programme.
She said: “When I lost my dad, his family claimed my mum was responsible for his death. They abandoned us and ever since, my mom had been fending for us.”
According to her, her trouble started after a middle aged woman walked into the shop where she was an apprentice hair-stylist. Adejoke, who was just 19 at that time, said that the stranger approached her with an unusual proposal.
Adejoke said: “The woman told me about a country she resides; she said that if she takes me there, I would enough for myself and my family. My happiness knew no bound. I told myself that finally, an angel has come to help us. Unknown to me, she was a devil in human’s clothing.”
A week later, without informing her mom and siblings, Adejoke followed the woman via road to Libya.
She said: “The woman told me that we would board a flight to Spain, where I would start working as a stylist. The long journey by road was through Sahara Desert. It was hellish. We saw dead bodies on the ground. Even the vehicle that was following us, passed on top of a buried bomb and it exploded. Every passenger died.”
Adejoke witnessed scenes far too horrific to repeat as masked men attacked a vehicle close to theirs, beating the occupants to a stupor and raping the all the females.
Finally they made it to Libya’s capital city of Tripoli. Adejoke was taken by the woman to a duplex. The first glimpse of her new home was a shock.
She said: “I met five Nigerian girls there, who were half-naked. They smiled at me in confusion. The woman told me that she would explain everything. The following morning when I woke up, the woman brought some underwear for me. She said they were the clothes I must wear to work.”
As realisation dawned, Adejoke bluntly refused to cooperate.
She continued: “That afternoon, men said they wanted to meet me because I was new, but I protested. The woman went outside and brought a cane. They flogged me until I became too weak. She then took me to one of the rooms and tied. She tied my hands to the back of my head, dragged my two legs wide open and tied them separately. My legs were wide open. That very day, 30 men used me in the room where I was chained.
“After two weeks, other girls told me that if I didn’t accept prostitution, that the woman would tie me down for two years. When I knew the whole thing was like that, I accepted.”
She was informed that she would have to repay a total of $9,000 to the devilish lady to ‘cover the costs’ of her travel to Libya. Soon, fate struck another shattering blow.
Adejoke said: “Immediately I planned to leave the place, I fell seriously sick. Nearly one year of sleeping with multiple men on a nightly basis had taken its toll on me. To my greatest surprise, my womb fell. I had to be taken to the hospital where they operated on me in order to remove it.”
Feeble and practically penniless, Adejoke faced the ominous challenge of making enough money for the return journey to Nigeria. Her options were limited. “At the end of the day, I had no choice. I still had to resort to the prostitution to return to Nigeria,” she said.
She ended up in another brothel and started saving to return home. She encountered a fellow Nigerian prostitute, who had a similar experience. A relationship developed between the two and they both resolved to return to Nigeria together.
To be continued
First Published 2019
