Ghanaian Prostitutes Battle Nigerian Invaders
Read the two stories below; ‘my encounter with underage Nigerian girls trapped in Malian brothels by Rev Raymond Uzondu that appeared in Punch, and Sex War: Ghanaian Prostitutes Battle Nigerian Invaders
The case of Rev Raymond Uzondu, a Nigerian missionary to Mali
Rev Raymond moved to Mali in 1996 because, accoding to him, he felt an urge to take the gospel there. Little did he know what was waiting for him there. ‘‘Mali is a country with the majority of its population being Muslims. The people are very friendly, so it was not difficult to adapt,‘‘ he said. Soon, Raymond noticed an ugly trend: Nigerian girls were being trafficked to Mali in droves for prostitution. ‘‘It was not as bad as it is now,” he said. ”It has become a serious problem because of the unending poverty and unemployment. It is Nigerian men who bring the girls to Mali under the pretext that they are taking them to Europe. When they get to Mali, they are abandoned to Brothel owners who become their masters".
Ironically, he noted, the brothel owners are mostly Nigerian women from Edo State. ‘‘A brothel can contain as many as 1,000 Nigerian girls. In fact, I know of one woman who has three such brothels, each containing 1000 Nigerian girls. Each girl is made to pay as much as N2 million, to offset the cost of transporting her from Nigeria to Mali. The same brothel operators would later go back to Nigeria and build houses in their states and nobody would know the source of their wealth."
The experience of Nigerian girls trafficked to Mali for prostitution is indeed harrowing because of peculiar circumstances. ‘‘Prostitution is legal in Mali. Prostitutes pay stipulated amounts to the Malian government and police to maintain order in their brothels. This makes it quite difficult to rescue girls who were tricked into this job and have no desire to continue in it,‘‘ Rev Raymond said. ‘‘I took it upon myself to bring the girls home after I started coming in contact with them. Some who have paid up their debts are able to leave and seek refuge in churches. Since I work with all churches, I get to meet such girls."
He acknowledges that many underage girls were still trapped in brothels in Mali. ‘‘A few of these girls have escaped. The brothels are usually much secured. Any girl brought there is denied contact with the outside world. You are in bondage until you can pay off your debt. Some have taken ill, died and have been buried within the brothels‘premises. I have tried to get the Nigerian embassy to intervene but they keep telling me there is nothing they can do, because they are on foreign soil. The Consular even said he had gone as far as calling on the governors of Edo and Delta states to get involved in bringing their girls back home. Some are very willing to come back and we need assistance to bring them home. The Nigerian government should get involved. It is now a matter of national honour because our image in Mali is tarnished. We are now known as a nation of prostitutes."
While thousands of trapped girls await help from the government, the Nigerian Christian community in Mali is not folding its arms. There are lots of churches who have taken these girls in, pending when they would be taken back to Nigeria. ‘‘You know I have been doing it on my own before. It was not until two months ago that I learnt about a government agency called NAPTIP, which is responsible for these sorts of things. It was a border officer who saw me bringing back three girls to Nigeria that told me of NAPTIP and even gave me their number. I have been bringing girls to them ever since. But we need more involvement from government, ‘he said.
He recalled moments of frustration when he tried together with a catholic priest to get the cooperation of the Nigerian embassy in assisting with transportation. ‘‘There is a priest in the catholic cathedral in Mali who has been involved too in assisting trafficked girls. He was overjoyed when he learnt of NAPTIP and went with me to the embassy. We wanted to discuss how these girls would be brought home. When we realised the embassy was not going to assist us with transportation we were so frustrated.
‘‘If the Nigerian government decides to take action, a BRT bus would be filled with girls coming back home to Nigeria every month. It is not easy to do this alone. I am a married man with five children, but I cannot fold my arms and watch these girls suffer. At the same time, it is also a big sacrifice on the part of my family when I divert money meant for them to bring these girls back. We need the Nigerian government to be more proactive. This trafficking must stop. If they secure the assistance of the Malian government, it would be easier to break this network of criminals who are exploiting our girls."
Ghanaian Prostitutes Battle Nigerian Invaders
Ghanaian girls who offer sex for money are currently not happy over the influx of young Nigerian girls into their country.
They are currently spoiling for war, P.M.NEWS has learnt through News One, a Ghanaian news outfit.
The sex workers who operate in Adum, a suburb of Kumasi in the Ashanti region, said they were disenchanted that younger and prettier girls from Nigeria are gradually taking over the sex business as they could hardly retain their usual customers.
According to investigation, if not for the intervention of the assembly member for the area, Albert Osei-Banahene, the enraged sex workers would have protested nude and marched from one office building to another, just to get the authorities to come to their aide.
According to one of the sex workers, “it is not that they are better than us in bed but as you know, most men prefer younger girls and these Nigerian girls are younger.
“Some are still in their teens and their agents protect them but we do not have agents who make things easier for us so. So, the conditions of work are not fair. We would start attacking any underage ashawo from Nigeria because they are spoiling the market.”
Though both groups are prostituting, the Ghanaian girls have cleverly named themselves commercial sex workers while they call their Nigerian counterparts ‘ashawos,’ a more derogatory term for prostitutes.
We learnt that a group of Nigerians take these girls to Ghana where they link them up with prominent Ghanaians and share some percentage of the money the prostitutes get from the trade.
According to the Ghanaian sex workers, the arrival of sexier girls from Nigeria is making business very competitive and compelling them to either lower their rates or lose customers.
Not pleased about the development, the disillusioned sex workers have declared their preparedness to hit the streets in protest should authorities fail to respond to their call and put in place appropriate measures to arrest the worrying situation.
In an interview with an online portal, the sex workers revealed that some Nigerians living in Kumasi have made it their business of bringing in very pretty sex workers from Nigeria to engage in the trade in the country.
“Having realised the potential in the business, some Nigerians living in the city have decided to make it their business by bringing sex workers from their country to come and work here,” one of the disgruntled sex workers observed.
“When they bring them, they initially put them in hotels, before hiring rooms for them to practise their trade but we do not have agents or promoters so we are losing the market even in our own country,” another dissatisfied sex worker noted.
According to them, they would do everything within their means to ensure that the practice was stopped, because they believe that as Ghanaians, they have exclusive right to the trade.
“We cannot allow Nigeria to take over everything in the country including the sex trade,” the sex workers emphasized.
The assembly member for the area, Hon Albert Osei-Banahene, who has been appealing to the sex workers to remain calm, urged the government to take up the matter and ensure that it is resolved amicably.
He noted that it was important for the government to come in strongly because of the ages of the girls who are purported to have been brought into the city for sex trade.
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