Police operatives attached to Sango-Ota Area Command in Ogun State have rescued 22 ladies including underage girls deployed as sex slaves after they raided Kolab Hotel, a brothel in Itele area of the state.
Those arrested during the operation that took place on Friday evening also included the manager of the hotel, his supervisor and eight other male workers.
The development was confirmed by spokesperson for the state police command, Abimbola Oyeyemi.
Oyeyemi stated on Saturday that 11 male suspects were equally apprehended at the facility.
“The police team, upon credible intelligence received that minors were being recruited from other states and used as commercial sex workers at Kolab Hotel in Itele-Ota, stormed the said hotel around 8pm on Friday. Twenty-two teenagers were rescued.
“On interrogation, the girls narrated how they were lured from their respective villages in Akwa Ibom State to come to Ogun State, with the promise to employ them as salesgirls in restaurants and supermarkets, only for them to get to Lagos and be transferred to a brothel in Ogun State as commercial sex workers.
“They narrated further that they were deprived of using phones or any communication devices, therefore, making it impossible for them to reach out to their parents or relations. The Commissioner of Police, Edward Ajogun, has ordered that the family support unit of the Area Command take over the investigation of the case, identify the recruiting cartel and bring them to justice as soon as possible.”
The raid was reportedly prompted by Saturday PUNCH’s undercover report which reported how minors were being forced into prostitution at the brothel.
A correspondent had posed as a client to gain access to the room of one of the girls, 16-year-old Abigail (not real name), on Tuesday.
The victim, who claimed to have dropped out at Senior Secondary School 1 due to financial constraint, had narrated how one Aunty Bright brought her from Calabar, Cross River State, sometime in November 2020 to work with one Madam Nelly as a salesgirl so she could raise money to return to school.
Shortly after she arrived her destination, Nelly changed her real name to Abigail and turned her into a sex slave, collecting proceeds of prostitution – N500 per client for short time (brief sex) and N1,000 for all-night romp – from her on a daily basis.
The minor’s appeal that she was tired and wanted to return to her hometown in Calabar fell on deaf ears, adding that Nelly didn’t allow her access to a mobile phone.
However, our correspondent, who visited the Area Command on Saturday after the raid, noticed that Abigail was not among the rescued victims.
During another visit to the hotel around 3pm alongside a police team, a wrapper Abigail donned on Tuesday when our correspondent spoke to her was hung on her apartment door which had been locked up. Her belongings were recovered from the room after the padlock was broken.
Recounting their ordeal, one of the rescued girls, Vivian a 15-year-old disclosed that she needed money to pay for a contribution meant to bribe invigilators during external examinations that would be held in August.
The Senior Secondary School 3 student narrated how her cousin, named Happiness, brought her to Lagos from Akwa Ibom with a promise to help her secure a salesgirl job to raise money.
“I arrived at Lagos last Sunday without my mum’s consent. Happiness took me to the hotel in Ogun and she handed me over to one madam. In the evening, the woman asked me if I knew the nature of the job I would be doing and I said selling clothes. She then told me it is prostitution. I felt sad and told her I couldn’t do it. I was crying.”
According to her, the madam, whose name she couldn’t mention, asked her to wear short dresses and hang around for clients, stating that men approached her but she ignored them.
“I started praying to God to save me. I was crying that I wanted to go back but nobody listened to me. On Thursday, my friends warned me that Madam would beat me if I didn’t make any money. So I allowed a man to ‘sleep’ (have sex) with me. He gave me N1,000 and Madam collected it.
“Yesterday (Friday), she didn’t give me breakfast. It was in the evening she gave me rice and after eating, she told me to go and hustle. After some minutes, everybody started running around, shouting ‘police, police.’ I didn’t run away and that was how the police rescued me,” she said.
