SLAVE-LIKE CONDITIONS! Sex traffickers holding 20,000 Nigerian women and girls in Mali, says NAPTIP

No fewer than 20,000 women and girls from Nigerian are being held by sex traffickers in Mali, says the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

NAPTIP’s director general, Julie Okah-Donli, who made the revelation in a Reuters’ report, said the women and girls are stranded in Mali after being forced into prostitution.

Okah-Donli said a fact-finding team from NAPTIP and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) uncovered the extent of the trafficking during a visit to southern Mali last month.

The D-G said the women and girls, most aged 16-30, had been told they would be taken to Malaysia to work in hospitality but instead were forced into prostitution.

“They were reliably informed by the locals that they had over 200 such places scattered around the southern part of Mali. In each of the shacks where they held them they had 100 to 150 girls in the area. That is how we came to the figure” of at least 20,000 being held, she said in a Reuters’ report.

“They are held in horrible, slave-like conditions.

 “They can’t escape because they are kept in remote locations, like deep in forests.”

Okah-Donli said her agency had partnered with IOM, which arranged the repatriation of 41 women and girls from Mali in December and was working on returning others home.

They come mostly from states in southern Nigeria, including Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Anambra and Edo.