“Some of our girls are taken from Nigeria down to Ghana with 1000 cedis, while they are expected to reimburse 18,000 to 20,000 cedis before they are let go.
“Imagine a girl sleeping with 10 – 15 men per day so as to meet this demand.”
Ghana is increasingly being viewed as a grim destination where the bright futures of countless young Nigerian women are tragically squandered.
While the traffickers thrive extravagantly on this nefarious trade, the young women are often left to endure lives filled with suffering and despair, and tragically, some even pay the ultimate price for their dreams of a better life.
Damilola, a 30-year-old from Lagos, at no time in her life imagined being a commercial sex worker, as published by Naija Diaspora Magazine.
She detested everything about the practice, considered as one of the oldest trades in human history and would have nothing to do with those engaged in it or promoting it.
Unfortunately, her quest to earn a living and become independent after an ugly development between her parents led her into commercial sex work she had vigorously campaigned against.
Her words: “I was staying with my family at Surulere, Lagos before we had family issues that made my parents to divorce.
In a bid to work hard and become independent, I met a woman, who promised to help me get established as a makeup artist. Fast forward, l found myself in Ghana.”
In Ghana, Damilola noticed that the place she was taken to was a ghetto.
“I started seeing girls parading themselves all over the whole place. The environment was unfriendly.”
“The woman said I should pay her back the money she spent bringing me down to Ghana. I told her it wasn’t my business. She took my phone and locked me inside.”
At that point, Damilola said: “I had no alternative but to cooperate with her. I started sleeping with men for three months, after which, I paid her.”
In the course of working in the dingy environment as a commercial sex worker, Damilola had a weird encounter that further devastated her.
“I met my immediate elder sister in the same ghetto in Ghana. I was shocked because my sister was staying with someone in Anambra State. My sister couldn’t explain how she found herself in Ghana, in the same ghetto with me.”
Aside from Damilola and her sister, hordes of Nigerian ladies are still holed up in Ghana’s numerous prostitution dens.
Also reliving her experience, Delight, a 22-year-old from Kaduna State said she has been in Ghana for six months.
“When I arrived in Ghana, I saw other girls dressing up in the evening in mini skirts and skimpy outfits. I started shedding tears because what I had in mind before coming was not what I was seeing.
Initially, I refused to allow men to touch me.”
Angered by her unwillingness to sleep with men “my madam got angry with me and told me that she was giving me one month to remit 8,000 cedis to her.
I started doing prostitution because my madam threatened to send assassins to kill me if I dared to escape. Now that I have escaped, I will want to continue with my handwork if I get back to Nigeria.”
Meanwhile, Chief Callistus Elozieuwa, the Chief Executive Director of Rescue Lives Foundation and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Nigerians in Diaspora Organization (NIDO) Ghana, told Naija Diaspora how Nigerian teenagers are products of sex trafficking whereby a girl sleeping with 10-15 men daily.
He said: “some of our girls are taken from Nigeria down to Ghana with 1000 cedis, while they are expected to reimburse 18,000 to 20,000 cedis before they are let go.
“Imagine a girl sleeping with 10 – 15 men per day so as to meet this demand.
Although we have free movement of people, our authorities at the borders should be watchful of what happens at the borders.”
The soft spoken businessman regretted that parents have lost control of their children. “It is high time parents stood up to their responsibilities over their children, especially the girl child. We should not always blame the government for our misfortune,” he said.
