A Lagos-based security and advocacy outfit, Angels Assurance Security Outfits Limited, with help of the Nigerian Police Force, Lagos State Command has seven girls from being trafficked to Ghana by an international prostitution ring.
The Festac Town in Amuwo-Odofin based outfit discovered the first girl simply identified as Onyinyechi last Saturday morning, and later used information from her to rescue other girls from hotels in the area.
According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Angel Ify Udeogalanya, in the process of rescuing the girls, three persons were arrested alleged human trafficking.
The suspects were later handed over to the Area E Police Command for transfer to the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
One of the suspects, identified as Ejike, was alleged to have forcefully had sexual intercourse with two of the girls several times before his arrest. The two girls are of ages 14 and 16.
NaijaTimes gathered that prior to the rescue of the girls, the first batch of girls and three boys had been moved from the hotels to Ghana via road.
The traffickers reportedly lured the girls from Akwa-Ibom and Abia states with a promise to get them jobs as cleaners in Lagos, but on getting to the state, they told them to prepare to be taken to Ghana for prostitution.
It was further gathered that the girls were told that the Ghanaian Cedi was higher in value than the Nigerian naira, thus they would become rich within days of putting themselves to work.
NaijaTimes also learnt that the girls were housed in two different hotels and were locked in their rooms. It was in those rooms that the said Ejike allegedly went to have sex with the two girls and groped the breasts of others.
“On the first day of my arrival, he had sex with me twice in the room where he had locked me. After that, every time he was going out, he would lock me in. I stayed there for three days and in those three days, he was always having sex with me,” the 14-year-old girl said.
Another of the girls rescued, who simply gave her name as Harmony, said she had been trafficked once to Anambra State by two men, where she was forced by her madam to have sex with 35 men per day at N1, 000 per client.
According to her, she was told by her traffickers that she was going to Anambra to work as a waitress in a bar where she will be paid N20, 000 as salary.
Harmony, the first child in a family of five children, with a crippled father and the mother selling beans cake by the roadside, felt it was a good deal but when she got to the supposed beer parlour, she was shocked at what she saw.
She said, “I saw nine-year-old girls, 10-year-old girls and 15-year-old girls being forced by their madams to hustle. I asked a woman there what the girls were doing just to be sure, and she said prostitution. My madam said I should work for her, I said no. She starved me of food until I had to start doing the work.”
“The suffering there was too much. I was punished several times by kneeling on periwinkle shells and broken bottles. Customers pay N1000 and they are usually in a queue. In a day, I made between N30, 000 and N40,000, which means between 30 and 40 men in a day. My madam collected all the money.
“There was a time when a client gave me N5000, but he did not touch me, he only asked me to leave that hotel. My madam saw the money and collected it from me,” Harmony recalled.
The leader of the prostitution ring who has been identified as one Ebuka and still at large, eloped on the day the ring was bust. And following the bust, Ebuka it was learnt, has been calling Udeogalanya with a Ghana telephone line.
He initially asked her to name her price so that she could release the girls back to him and back out. He later offered her N2 million, which she turned down.
Udeogalanya said her heart bled for the girls and immediately moved them to NAPTIP, even as she expressed concern for her own safety.
Confirming the development, Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), SP
Benjamin Hundeyin, said the matter, including the names of the three suspects has been transferred to NAPTIP on Wednesday .
