The Nigerian king who cursed
Edo State is Nigeria’s capital of human trafficking, and local authorities are seemingly powerless to protect vulnerable women and girls. Enter His Royal Majesty Oba Ewuare II, the ruler of the ancient Kingdom of Benin, who – like the traffickers – plays
Oil palm trees grow throughout Nigeria’s Niger Delta, but they grow biggest in Edo State. The tree trunks here are fatter than in neighbouring Delta State; the fronds spread out like wings, sweeping the ground from towering heights; the palm fruit is redder, juicier.
But sweet palm oil is not what this southern state is famous for.
Benin City, the state capital, is a global hub for the trafficking of women. Up to 10000 are trafficked from Nigeria every year, usually to Europe, and nine out of 10 of these women are from Edo.
They are sent along the migrant trail — a dangerous route that has claimed the lives of thousands of migrants — usually along the Benin-auchi road to Kano or Sokoto states in northern Nigeria, crossing over into Agadez in neighbouring Niger and on to Libya. From there, migrants take a rickety boat across the Mediterranean.
Last year, a CNN investigation uncovered these migration routes, and highlighted Edo State’s central role in sex trafficking, thoroughly marring Edo’s reputation, which was already poor. The negative international headlines were probably the motivation for His Royal Majesty Omo N’ Oba N’edo Uku Akpolokpolo — better known as Oba Ewuare II — the traditional head of the ancient Benin Kingdom, to act.
In March last year, in front of all his chiefs and the priests of Edo’s indigenous religions, he pronounced a royal curse on the heads of human traffickers and their support networks. “Whoever does it from today will face the wrath of our ancestors,” he said — and Edo State listened.
Auntie’s empty promises
Itohan Okundaye’s looks were her undoing. At 29, Okundaye looks a decade younger. Her lips, pink and full, sit in an oval-shaped face. Her smile, ever ready, reveals dimples and straight, white teeth. Born and brought up in Benin, Okundaye was an easy target for rapacious traffickers on the hunt for young women to smuggle to Europe.
In 2005, when 16-year-old Okundaye had just finished junior school, a relative she called “Auntie” told her she could find a better life in Europe. Being chosen to go was a competitive process, said Auntie, and Okundaye was ecstatic when she was told that she had made the cut.
Auntie promised to foot all her travel expenses, including paying for fake passports. Although it was painful for Okundaye to leave her family — she was a child, after all — the promise of euros to send back to her struggling parents was comforting.
It wasn’t until Okundaye arrived in Italy that it dawned on her that she’d been trapped: Auntie had sent her to be a sex worker. Nor was Auntie upfront about the costs of the trip. “I remember her telling me: ‘The money you’re going to pay is €40000’,” Okundaye recounts. “I was like ‘What?’ We never discussed it. I never knew I was going to pay that kind of money until I got there.”
In Edo, traffickers like Auntie are called sponsors. They usually approach young women directly or employ family members to recruit them, according to Mabel Ekido, who works for Girls’ Power Initiative, an organisation that strives to empower girls in Edo to reduce trafficking rates.
It’s a common sight to see girls hawking edibles in Benin, working at market stalls or at hairdressing salons, and these are places the sponsors or their aides target for recruitment.
“The easiest way to know them is they’ll tell you wonderful stories about Europe and offer to assist you at no cost,” said Ekido. The sponsors take it a step further by showing pictures of other girls who’ve “made it” in Italy with vocational skills. It’s a script that has been followed for a long time, a script that worked on Okundaye and keeps working on thousands more. In 2016, more than 11000 women and minors were trafficked to Europe from Nigeria, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Breaking the blood pact
Before starting the long, dangerous journey to Europe, the recruited women and girls are taken to spiritual priests, known locally as native doctors, to sign a blood pact. The priests take samples of their fingernails, pubic hair, underwear and blood and prepare concoctions for them to drink. Then, an oath of secrecy is made to ensure that they obey their madams in Europe. These madams are usually older sex workers who have risen through the ranks of underground sex trafficking networks that operate across Europe.
The blood pact is in effect a binding contract that prevents trafficked women from escaping or violating the terms of their debt bondage. Or, at least, it was a binding contract: Oba Ewuare II used his authority to nullify these pacts, saying that trafficked women were freed from their oaths and owed nothing to the people who trafficked them.
It was already too late for Okundaye. She had spent five years as a sex worker to pay off her €40 000 debt to Auntie. She supplemented her income by taking on another job as a stripper in a nightclub.
Despite her suffering, Okundaye dared not refuse to work because the consequences of breaking the blood pact was too high. Many girls and women have died or gone mad. In some cases, those who disobeyed their madams were reported as illegal immigrants and then deported home with nothing.
The blood pact has made it difficult for anti-trafficking organisations in Nigeria and Europe to arrest and prosecute madams and others involved in trafficking. The sex slaves often refuse to report their traffickers or testify against them out of fear of being struck dead for breaking the pact.
In 2018, Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons convicted only 26 traffickers out of 662 cases received, according to a United States state department report.
Fighting juju with juju
Human traffickers used spiritual beliefs — known as juju — to take advantage of vulnerable women. Thanks to Oba Ewuare II’S intervention, those same beliefs can now be used to combat human trafficking.
In Edo, belief systems are deeply rooted in the supernatural and coexist with Christianity and Islam. Traditional ways of solving antisocial behaviours are not unusual: on a recent Wednesday evening, about 40 worshippers of Ayelala, an occult goddess, dressed in red and chanting curses, walked along a main street in Benin during rush hour. A store had