The business heartland of Anambra state, Onitsha, was set ablaze with the fire of sensitization against human trafficking recently. This came as a result of the Integrated Anti-Human Trafficking and Community Development Initiative,INTACOM Africa, Roadwork and Sensitization program that held at the heart of the metropolis in the wee hours of Monday, December 14, 2015.
The 30-man team led by Okoye Hope Nkiruka, the founder and Executive Director of the NGO, and made up of Volunteers, Human Trafficking Survivors, and media people marched through the streets of the Onitsha suburb sharing stickers and handbills and messages of warning and admonition against human trafficking to the people. Then, at the venue of the interdenominational fellowship of the market, Okoye Hope addressed the traders who had converged for their usual morning prayers.
Explaining the event during interaction with the press, Mrs Okoye explained that the program was a grass-root awareness campaign that was funded by the European Union under the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime,– UNODC NAPTIP grant component two. She disclosed that she has partnered with the leadership of Onitsha Main Market as a community to create awareness and sensitize the people on issues of human trafficking and smuggling of migrant and illegal migration.
Speaking further on the reason for the program, the INTACOM boss said that a study UNODC carried out in 2012, together with the report coming from immigration and some of the survivors the organization has identified in the course of their work in Anambra state has revealed that Anambra state is a human traffickingendemic community. This, she said, made it expedient for them to create this awareness with prevention as their objective.
The t-shirt worn by the sensitization team read ‘I am priceless’ and explaining the intent, Hope Okoye said that it was to reverse the mindset of the people from seeing fellow humans as commodities that can be traded upon. She likened the practice to the slave trade of yester-years calling it modern day slavery where people, out of ignorance, give up themselves for people to enslave them. “That is why we are here today to make people realize that there is no gold for them to pick on the streets of foreign countries. Instead of them selling off what they have, borrowing money trying to leave this country with the hope of greener pasture, it is better for them to use that money to get themselves established here. There are a lot of unharnessed opportunities in this nation,” she said
Okoye Hope Nkiruka also enjoined the Nigerian government to be more responsive to the people and make the environment more conducive for the people so they would not have reasons to be leaving the country en masse.Speaking, she said, “We are losing our young men and women in their thousands in the desert and theMediterean Sea, because they want to get to Europe by all means. If they are not able to get visa, you will see people posing as agents,who are really traffickers, taking advantage of their vulnerability to use them as a commodity.”
On how the organization takes care of the victims, the INTACOM boss said that the organization through the aid of their partners recover and rehabilitate victims who are thenknown as survivors and some of them join her as volunteers in the sensitization campaign.
Narrating, she said, “One of our comrades, Osita Osameme who is a graduate in the University of Benin was selling fairly used vehicles in Nigeria. He sold up everything on his way to Spain. But he ended up drinking women’s urine just to survive the drought in the Sahara desert. When they told him to pay 1,200 dollars to enter a small boat which he called lampa lampa used for fishing in his hometown, he said it was suicide to use such a tiny boat to cross the Meditterean sea and that was how he stopped short on his track and started retracing his steps back home. Today he joins us in the crusade.”
Hope informed that they also let people understand that when some of these people come back empty handed, it does not mean that they were not smart enough over there.In her words, “Imagine finding yourself in a country where you do not even understand their language and there is no country that doesn’t have its own share of unemployment. Go to the U.S,Morocco, Greece; you see the problems they are going through. It is shame and fear of stigmatization that keeps some of our people over there from coming back.”
She narrated the account of another survivor who drank women’s urine for six days and lost a toe while trying to cross the Spanish enclave (a fence of barbed wire). The survivor almost drowned while crossing the sea save for his life jacket that held him up till coast guards saved him and detained him for some time before he wasdeported back to Nigeria.According to her, he said that out of the 9 months he spent away from Nigeria, he begged on the streets ofMorocco for five months, a feat they christened ‘hustling’. The lady announced that the man in question, despite encountering stigmatization when he got back, was helped by their partners to go back to College.
One of the survivors, Pastor Elvis Okolie, who said he came back to Nigeria as a semi lunatic narrated his ordeal as a victim of human trafficking in the desert to everyone ready to listen. In his words, “On one occasion, our vehicle broke down in the desert and we were asked to push it. We did and as the vehicle engine started, those desert guides drove off leaving about 38 of us behind in the middle of the desert to die.”
He said that it was a miracle he survived being the only surviving of the trio that left together on the journey. Elvis Okolie also alleged that there are cases where some of these so-called travel agentscoerce people into going with them on the trip with the promise of greener pasture only to kidnap these victims, keep under torture and blackmail the victim’s people to send ransom money before they are released.
“They lock our girls in a room and force them to have sex with several men in order to make money. In a day, 50 people will have sex with one girl. They cue up for the marathon on the girl and these men collect the money. If the girl is resistant, they spread eagle her against the bed and tie their hands and feet,” he narrated. He termed it a very terrible experience and enjoined all to know that there is no money on the streets of abroad. “Here is better than there.”
Reverend father Patrick Aniere based in Rome, a missionary priest and agriculturist said he has been out of the country and in different parts of the world and eighty percent of Nigeria regretted leaving Nigeria. In his words, ‘you discover that Nigeria is such a great country only when you leave the shores of Nigeria.’ The priest fingered poor economy as the cause of the mass exodus of Nigerian youths.
He however quickly added that the problem of unemployment and economic crunch is a global one. Father Patrick then observed how a lot of Nigerians are lured into drug trafficking as a result of the hardship overseas and that is what ends them up in prisons.
“Italy, UK, Germany, are some of the places you find them,” he said
The priest then opined that investing in agriculture is the solution to this problem. “I am a catholic priest and have lived outside the country for over thirty years yet I haave a farm here and my greatest delight is coming back to Nigeria to inspect my – poultry, vegetable and crop farm, which Icall my small London.” There is a lot to gain in agriculture, the padre quipped. He therefore called the youth to go back to agriculture which makes them their own bosses and can be commencedwith any amount of money.
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