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to a meeting of African ministers in Benin.

The hope is to adopt an action plan to combat trafficking, one which will place the rights of the child at the centre of all future policy. "Trafficking in human beings" is a phrase guaranteed to cause a sharp intake of breath among listeners from the liberal and affluent and concerned West. The view of trafficking in Nigeria is somewhat different. In fact, it is seen as an everyday part of West African life. It starts with the promise of a better life. The parents are taken in.

The children are persuaded. When they leave home they do so willingly, with some excitement, not trepidation. The trafficker has promised a good job, a schooling, a regular income. But that is not how it works out. One young woman told me she was promised regular work in the Nigerian countryside. She found herself transported overland through the north of Nigeria, to Mali, then to Algeria, then Morocco.

From there she was smuggled into Spain, at night, in a small boat, and from there, on forged papers, into Italy by train.
They took her to a house in Turin where she lived with other girls, some, but not all, Nigerians like her, and under the control of a madam, also Nigerian.

She was put to work as a prostitute, something she speaks of now with a discernible shame.

After seven months, she had earned enough money to pay off what she owed the traffickers for taking her in the first place. When that debt was paid, her trafficker took her to the Italian immigration authorities and she was repatriated, home to Benin City, Nigeria with nothing to show for her ordeal. With the continuous trend of human trafficking which is on the rise, governments in African countries have a lot to do to eradicate poverty which forms the basis for being lured into modern day slavery. Only then can any law promulgated against slavery have meaning.

Learn more about this author, Calistus Ibenye.
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