‘How we were trafficked abroad to work as slaves’

Avictim of human trafficking, Jubril Blessing, has narrated to Daily Trust how a trafficker took her and other girls out of Nigeria to work as slaves abroad.

Blessing, who spoke of her experience yesterday when the Chairman of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) in Ekiti State, Mrs Adefunke Anoma, paid a courtesy visit on the state commander of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Mr Solomon Iyamu, said she and the other girls were allegedly tricked by one Mr Jude out of Ekiti State on the pretext he was taking them to Lagos to work in a hotel as attendants.

Blessing stated they were surprised Jude told them when they got to Lagos they would be proceeding to another country to work in other branches of the hotel.

The suspected trafficker then allegedly beckoned on another man who put four of them in a vehicle headed for Cotonou, Benin Republic, while she (Blessing) and another girl were put in another vehicle going to Senegal.

She stated further that she and her colleague decided to disembark from the vehicle after they got to Senegal and were again told they would be taken to another country.

She said they (the two girls) received a call from the other four girls taken to Cotonou that they were going through hell over there, and that what they were made to be doing over there was not what Jude had promised them.

But Jude, who also spoke with our correspondent, maintained he was only trying to help the girls to secure better jobs outside the country, saying he had assisted a lot of Nigerians to get good jobs in countries like Ghana, Togo and Cotonou.

Decrying the increase in cases of human trafficking and rape in the state, Mrs Anoma described the trend as alarming and required special attention.