Modern Day Trafficking

 Bibi Agarah

Human trafficking is the illegal trade of people for exploitation and commercial gain. This includes forced economic exploitation and domestic work. Nigeria is ranked 32nd out of 167 countries with the highest rate of human trafficking. It is both a source and a destination for traffickers. The high level of trafficking in the country is caused by a lack of economic opportunities, corruption, and the level of insecurity in the country.

When we think of trafficking, we think of women and children held in detention centres in foreign counties for months; we think about the harrowing journey through inhumane conditions that it takes to get them to Libya, Italy or Dubai; we think of physical and sexual abuse; we think of death, STDs and missing organs. And we think that what we can do as a nation to fix this is to present an impressive paper to the National Assembly or the United Nations advocating for measures to curb the rise of trafficking in Nigeria.

But we can start with the little things. Take a look around; do you remember that maid? That little boy who has worked his thin, little body to exhaustion?

Human trafficking also takes place within the country – in our households and in other settings that we have blinked our eyes at; for example, live-in maids popularly called house-helps or omo-odo. Girls (and sometimes young boys) are taken from the eastern and northern parts of the country to work as maids in the west in exchange for very little money or the promise to learn a trade.

One of the most well-known ways to get cheap labour is to procure an 'agent’. Agents are the middlemen. They interact between the maid and the final consumer, negotiating salaries and work hours. Some girls have said agents often take as much as half of their first salaries or some even take the entirety of the first month as the agreement fees and once they begin to work, the agent vanishes - after all, he has been paid. Most of them report that they are unable to reach those who have placed them there.

Discipline is reported to be carried out through starvation and physical abuse. Many of them are also sexually abused by their employers or other people around them. It is very rare to see these omo-odo afforded basic public school education and sometimes, they are not even allowed to learn a trade. One of the ways employers can achieve all these is to restrict communication. A girl who had worked as a maid once said she was advised by her 'agent' to hide her phone or discard it because employers often viewed maids with phones or a means of communication as dangerous and lazy.

What do they view as dangerous? Their communication with the outside world? There have been reports of children dying of negligence, starvation, and violence. This is domestic slavery. It doesn't take a Caucasian, a whip, and an African before the term slavery can be used. It happens everywhere in Africa. The Ghanaian fishing industry is mostly run by little boys who do not go to school and undergo forced labour. They are physically abused: if they eat any of the fish they work hard to catch and prepare, they are beaten so hard that they "wish they didn't take it in the first place".

What can you do about this? Talk to the victims; report suspicious injuries; educate the victims about their rights. There are advocate groups that can be reached out to if you suspect a person (especially those under 18 years of age) is underpaid and overworked.