By Angela Ukomadu and Nneka Chile
LAGOS, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Blessing was only six years old
when her mother arranged for her to become an unpaid housemaid
for a family in the Nigerian city of Abuja, on the promise they
would put her through school.
In her home town in southwest Nigeria, her mother had
trouble making enough money to feed her three children. But when
Blessing arrived in Abuja, instead of going to school, the
family worked her round-the-clock, beat her with an electrical
wire if she forgot one of her chores and fed her rotten
leftovers.
When her mother later moved to the city to be closer to her
daughter, Blessing was unable to be alone with her when she came
to visit.
"They would tell me that my mother was coming, that I should
not tell her what was happening to me, that I should not even
say anything," she says of the family.
"If she asks me how am I doing I should say I am doing fine,
they said."
As the world marks 400 years since the first recorded
African slaves arrived in North America, slavery remains a
modern-day scourge. Over 40 million people are estimated to be
trapped in forced labour, forced marriages or other forms of
sexual exploitation, according to the United Nations.
Blessing, now 11, is one such victim. She was rescued in
2016 by the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication
Foundation (WOTCLEF), an anti-human trafficking group, after two
years of isolation and abuse. She is still under the care of
WOTCLEF, which gave consent for her to be interviewed for this
story.
Africa has the highest prevalence of slavery, with more than
seven victims for every 1,000 people, according to a 2017 report
by human rights group Walk Free Foundation and the International
Labour Office. The report defines slavery as "situations of
exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of
threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power."
Trafficking of sex workers, many of them tricked into
thinking they will get employment doing something else, is one
of the most widespread and abusive forms of modern-day slavery.
The experiences of Claudia Osadolor and Progress Omovhie
show how poverty increases women's vulnerability to
exploitation.
After Osadolor's family in Benin City in southern Nigeria
hit hard times, she dropped out of university and headed to
Russia after a cousin told her about someone who could help her
get work there, with travel expenses paid. She left Nigeria with
three other girls she did not know in June 2012. When she got to
Russia a "madam" came to pick her up.
Osadolor, now 28, says she was forced into prostitution and
suffered internal injuries after being made to sleep with up to
20 men a day. She was trapped for three years, with the madam
coming round every two weeks to take almost all of her money.
She cries as she recounts the trauma and her relief at
escaping thanks to a chance meeting with a representative of the
International Organization for Migration (IOM) at a metro
station.
"I feel like I paid the ultimate price for my family," she
says. "But I thank God that I came back alive."
Osadolor has been able to reintegrate into society after
training as a tailor back in Benin with the support of Nigerian
charity Pathfinders Justice Initiative.
Omovhie, 33, also found herself enslaved after leaving
Nigeria in 2015 in search of work. She paid an agent 700,000
naira ($2,290) - money she had borrowed - to smuggle her on a
journey across the Sahara desert to Libya, hoping eventually to
go to Europe.
The intended final destination of people smuggled across
Africa like this is often Europe, but few make it that far. Many
are jailed or sold as indentured labourers when they get to
Libya. Some are even sold on slave markets, according to aid
groups - a chilling echo of the trans-Saharan slave trade of
centuries past.
Once in Libya, Omovhie says she started working long hours
as a cleaner for a well-off Arab family in Tripoli, often on an
empty stomach.
"I worked three months and they did not pay me in that
house," she said.
Another agent promised to help Omovhie escape by sending her
to Italy, but she was rounded up by police on the Libyan coast
and detained there for six months. She returned to Nigeria in
July under a state programme to help refugees and migrants. It
has helped over 14,000 Nigerians return home since 2017.
Blessing and Claudia Osadolor are pseudonyms requested to
protect their anonymity.
($1 = 305.8500 naira)
(Writing by Alessandra Prentice;
Editing by Tim Cocks and Susan Fenton)