Two teenage Nigerian girls rescued from sex slaves in Burkina Faso

Two teenage Nigerian girls who were trafficked to Burkina Faso to become sex slaves have been rescued.

They were rescued by an anti-human trafficking NGO founded by a Nigerian, the National Association Against Trafficking of Young Persons (Lutra – Jeunes) and known in French as Association Nationale de Lutte Contre le Traffic des Jeunes.

The girls named Rejoice Chioma Israel, 16, and Rosemary ‎Uchenna Emmanuel, 19 were rescued by some people who called the anti-human

trafficking NGO, PM News reports.

Recounting her experience, Rosemary said they both worked at a small restaurant in Port Harcourt where they earned about ‎N3,000 a month, away from their families in Imo and Abia States. Then one day, a man visited the restaurant and told them about the well paid new jobs in Malaysia and they contributed N5,000 each and were handed over to the man’s brother who took them on the journey.

Rosemary said the man had promised to take them to Malaysia for a better life but they will stop over at Burkina Faso where they would obtain new passports and some vaccines before proceeding to Malaysia.

They left Nigeria with him on the 11^th July on the journey which took two days. But when they got to Ouagadugu, the capital of Burkina Faso, they were handed over to a Nigerian woman called Onome who manages at least 30 other Nigerian girls ‎with some as young as 14 years old.

She told them they would have to go into prostitution or pay her the sum of N1.2 million each to take them back to Nigeria but they refused explaining that they were on their way to Malaysia and were just making a brief stop in Burkina Faso for new passports and vaccines.

She then invited bad boys to take them away to a village ‎on motorcycles and that’s when they were rescued by some people who called the NGO.

According to Rosemary, she was pushed off the bike and sustained injury in her right hand and right leg during the rescue operation.

Speaking on the matter, a Nigerian and President of Lutra-Jeunes, the NGO that rescued the girls and brought them back to Nigeria, Ochuko Patrick Otoba said, the girls were deceived and trafficked to Burkina Faso for prostitution but when they refused, they were maltreated and beaten up with injury of irreparable degree.

“Enslaved, indebted, sold like donkeys, the young victims are between the ages of 14 to 22 and they are deceived by traffickers ‎in Nigeria who are also Nigerians,” he said.

Ochuko who said human trafficking is on the rise across the borders of West African countries, especially Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso, called on the Nigerian government to embark on serious awareness campaign, rescue other victims in Burkina Faso, build rehabilitation centres to house these victims and begin empowerment projects for rescued victims who are not educated but need skills to get back into the society.