Kidneys for sale! Nigerians tricked, lost renal organs in Indian hospital

In this second part of the investigative report on the frightening dimension that trafficking in persons across the world has taken, JULIANA FRANCIS dwells on the way it affects Nigerians and how NAPTIP is battling to create ample awareness and also rescue young Nigerian men and women already trapped by the powerful kidnapping rings.

After been on their trail for months, Gabriel and other agents in Nigeria were arrested in Nigeria while Nicole was arrested in Dubai and sentenced to two years for trafficking. For her atrocities in Nigeria, however, officials of NAPTIP said they were still waiting for her as she must face the music here as well. So bad is the kidnapping ring that a non-profit organisation in Lagos State, The Alliance of Rights Defenders (ARD), last year, discovered that over 500 girls trafficked to Libya, were caged in an underground prison as sex slaves.

The prostitution cartel in Libya was allegedly led by a Nigerian couple; Alhaji Muritala Sanni and his wife, Alhaja Lateefat Sanni. The discovery of ARD led to the rescue of some of the girls and later, the now almost daily repatriation of hundreds of Nigerians from Libya. One of those rescued was 26-yearold Abigail, a nurse, who unfortunately died after returning to Nigeria.
Before she died, she claimed to have aborted 320 pregnancies for trafficked girls while working for the Nigerian couple.
Abigail said the couple threatened to kill her if she exposed them and died shortly after her confession, a death that officials consider as anything but linked to natural causes. It all began with the couple promising to take her to Italy where she would work as a nurse for them and she paid the sum of N10,000 for her passport. Abigail said: “The agreement was that I will work and pay N2.4 million once I got to Italy.

This money included the amount Alhaja spent to take me overseas. Before we left Nigeria, they took us to a native doctor called Ewe in Abeokuta, Ogun State where we were made to take an oath. It was after the oath that we were taken to Libya instead of Italy.” Narrating further, she said: “Initially when I got to Libya and found out that my responsibility was to abort pregnancies for young girls, I refused but Alhaja Lateefat and her husband locked me up in a room and beat me severely with a mop stick.
I was left with no option but to submit to their will. Each time I refused to perform abortion for any of the girls, they would lock and beat me up. That was how I started assisting them to terminate unwanted pregnancies for young girls, working as call girls for Alhaja Lateefat.
We had girls aged between 10 and 15, all working as call girls; sleeping with all sorts of men without protection. Some of these girls confessed to me that they were hairdressing apprentices and fashion designers before they were deceived to come to Libya.” Apart from using girls as call girls and men/boys as servants, one of the most fearsome trends traffickers have employed in recent times is known as the harvesting of kidneys of victims.

According to a source who is privy to the inhuman act, kidney harvesting/ sale is now a very lucrative business in many countries abroad, especially in the Middle East. Asked how much how much traffickers sell organs, a NAPTIP official who pleaded anonymity, said: “It’s difficult to say how much because most of the cases are still under investigation.
There was a recent case last week in which some Nigerians in India lost one kidney each after bring trafficked and sedated during the journey.” When asked to reveal what happened to them exactly and how they realised their kidneys were missing since they were allegedly drugged, his response was crushing. “There were surgery marks on their abdomens. And doctors certified that they had lost one kidney each,” he replied, almost in a whisper.
With another source alleging that each kidney costs $1,000 or more. But what is worrisome is that victins are tricked to sell them. Investigation by Saturday Telegraph revealed that the travelling documents of most trafficked victims were prepared by agents who have accomplices in the countries of destination. Such cases, apart from the untold grief they represent, make one to wonder if Nigeria is really winning the war against human trafficking and human traffickers.

While this remains a challenge, the Director General of NAPTIP, Julie Okah- Donli, said the Nigerian government always seeks ways of collaboration with countries under NAPTIP’s radar of investigations.
According to her, NAPTIP is talking to security agencies in foreign countries to step up investigation and also share information with Nigeria on issues bordering on human trafficking “We are also investigating travel agents and have requested that they send details of those travelling for jobs and their employers to be with all the necessary documentation to NAPTIP for clearance before they can be issued visas to travel by the embassies,” she said while also disclosing that over 2,000 people had been repatriated so far this year, with at least 500 of that number being victims of trafficking.
Responding to a question on whether trafficking also affects men, she said: “Yes, men, boys and children are also trafficked. People fall prey because they are deceived, that there are jobs waiting for them. They believe, because most of the people that trick them, are friends and family members. These family members and friends, themselves are victims of trafficking and are forced to recruit under duress. Some are abducted while some are just ignorant.” On his own, NAPTIP’s Lagos State Zonal Commander, Joseph Famakin, said the roles of travel agents are very crucial.
“People can’t travel to Oman by road. For every person who is recruited to work in Oman, a traveling agency must be involved in the procurement of tickets. Some could procure tickets legitimately without being a member of a syndicate, but the possibility of a travelling agency getting involved in the case of human trafficking cannot be ruled out. So, for each case we are investigating, we also look out for the role of a travelling agency.” Famakin said NAPTIP once arrested a travel agent after tickets of many of those trafficked were traced to him while adding that trafficking does not only occur beyond Nigeria; trafficking within Nigeria is also popular.

“People that are trafficked locally are mostly children and they use them for domestic servitude or house help. Only few of them are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Whereas in the case of international trafficking, most of the girls that are trafficked are for sexual exploitation.” Speaking directly to trafficked victims in Oman, Famakin said: “I wish to state clearly that those sending Save Our Souls (SOS), should assist us. Sending an SOS message wouldn’t be much of a help until they give us information that will assist us get to the syndicate that trafficked them.
If the syndicate that trafficked them is adequately punished, according to the law, it will serve as a deterrent to other traffickers.” It’s worrisome that in spite of the rigorous media campaign that has been going on for years, coupled with NAPTIP’s and other organisations’ committed fight against trafficking, the scourge seems to be getting out of control, according to data available. “You must understand the push and pull factor of human trafficking.
Notwithstanding the sensitisation campaign, there are some other factors that fuel human trafficking. As long as those factors remain, people will still be trafficked. Some will willingly agree to go. However, they are not aware of the seriousness over there. That’s why our sensitisation campaign must continue. You will understand that one of the push factors of human trafficking is the socio-economic problem of Nigeria. An idle person is easy and gullible to be deceived.

If somebody after graduation for two or three years is unable to get an employment placement, she would be deceived about a job waiting overseas. She wouldn’t give the idea a second thought. You’ll see such person agreeing to be trafficked outside Nigeria. We have seen cases of those who were trafficked to Oman to serve as house help after their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
Some of them go to India. But they actually go into a dehumanising condition,” Famakin submitted. While making it known that traffickers are always changing their modes of operations, thus making it difficult to identify countries were Nigerian women are mostly being trafficked to, he added: “There are always new trends in trafficking. People are being trafficked to Oman under the disguise of house help.
They are trafficked to Dubai, Russia and different part of Europe. They now go through Miami and Libya, with a view of crossing to Europe.

The only important thing is that people should understand that it is not greener over there. They should not leave substances to chase shadows. Once they are told unbelievable stories, they should get in touch with NAPTIP.” The NAPTIP official said though mostly ingored, the red flags people should look out for in order to avoid being trafficked are always there. “Once somebody, who is not related to you agrees to sponsor your trip overseas, you should be suspicious. The person may promise to pay all the expenses, including procuring a passport. That is the first indicator. You must remember that there’s no free lunch in Freetown.
That person is trying to turn you into a money-making machine. That job wouldn’t be what you expect. “Another indicator is someone posing as a Good Samaritan. You should ask yourself; are there no ladies in his/her family that she/he could take overseas?
Why is he or she coming to your family to assist if the jobs are actually there? If there are jobs that are good, this Good Samaritan would have contacted a member of his\her family. Another indicator is somebody who is close to your family that wants to help you but he tells you not to tell anyone that he’s taking you overseas. What’s the need for secrecy? He’s trying to traffic you.
That’s why he’s asking you not to inform family members. “Also, be alert when someone is pretending to be helping you on humanitarian grounds; what is the purpose of taking you to a shrine to swear to an oath of secrecy? A shrine where your menstrual pad, pubic hair, fingernails are taken. Is that how to help somebody? You should ask questions otherwise you’ll become a victim.”

He urged prospective travellers who noticed any of the traffickers’ indicators or red flags, whether overseas or in Nigeria to look for non-governmental organisations to report to.
For those in Nigeria, Famakin said: “NAPTIP has nine zones, and in each of those zones, NAPTIP has hotlines and emails. In Lagos zone, NAPTIP hotline is 07080601801. You can also send us an email through Infolagos@ naptip.org.ng.
We will respond immediately. If you are in any other of our zones, the difference between NAPTIP’s email in Lagos and the other zone is simple.For example, Sokoto State is Infosokoto@ naptip.org.ng, same with other states.

Or the person may report to the nearest security agencies. “NAPTIP as an agency realises that we cannot fight the human trafficking war alone. We cannot be everywhere. In your environment, there are people living under exploitative conditions. Our children are suffering in the hands of exploiters.
We have seen a case where a 14-year-old girl was taken overseas; she was deflowered and expected to pay 64,000 euro, (N31 million) to get her freedom. For the girl to get out of bondage, she needed to serve her exploiter for the period of four years. Within those four years, she had to sleep with about 10 to 15 men daily for protected and unprotected sex. It is an act of inhumanity. My heart bleeds.
I urge everyone to become a public relations officer to NAPTIP. As I speak to you now, Nigerians are being trafficked through legal and illegal points like going through the desert and Mediterranean Sea, notwithstanding that they see pictures of people dying through this.” There’s no doubt that there is a surge in human trafficking in Nigeria, especially during this time.

The surge is not unconnected to the recession in the country which has seen many people being laid off their jobs and companies shutting down. Speaking in Abuja, Godwin Morka, Director, Research and Programme Development Department of NAPTIP, said that there was increase in the external trafficking of people for sexual exploitation. Morka said the increase was reflected in NAPTIP’s 2016 statistics.
He said that in 2016, more women were trafficked for internal and external sexual exploitation while more girls were trafficked for the purpose of child  labour and abuse.
He said some of the victims were in search of greener pastures abroad with those deceived often falling into the hands of criminal syndicates who exploited or killed them. According to him, NAPTIP stats indicates that women trafficked for prostitution in 2014 were 139 while the 2015 figure is 181 and not less than 298 for 2016.
While noting that women trafficked were from 18 and above, he noted, sadly, that the statistics are only the official ones as many more have been trafficked with anyone knowing about it.

Morka urged Nigerians, especially the youth, to become aware of the dangers of illegal migration and such dangerous ventures while also charging government to address the root causes of irregular migration, strengthen institutional capacities of law enforcement agencies and provide effective border management.
Ms Vivian Nwachukwu, a representative of the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, said the Federal Government recently approved the National Policy on Migration.
The approval, according to her, was an indication of government’s commitment to promote regular migration for the benefit of Nigeria and countries that Nigerians migrated to and in order to promote international relationships.

She explained that countries had the right to determine who they allowed to stay within their borders but that the national policy on migration provides for the safe and dignified return of its citizens.
A UN study in 2017 holds that up to 80 per cent of Nigerian migrant women and girls arriving on Europe’s shores in Italy could potentially be sex trafficking victims. In its report, “Human Traffick-ing through the Central Mediterranean Route,” the International Organization for Migration (IOM) highlights the plight of those who have been assisted by the UN agency and calls for urgent action against the “market” which are supplied these victims as well as what is called a “growing demand” for paid sexual services.
The Director of the IOM Coordinating Office for the Mediterranean, Federico Soda, said: “Trafficking is a transnational crime that devastates the lives of thousands of people and is the cause of untold suffering.

This is a theme we have been working on for years, committing to protect, prevent and collaborate with the authorities dealing with organised crime.” According to the UN agency, its office in Italy has witnessed an almost 600 per cent increase in the number of potential sex trafficking victims arriving in Italy by sea over the last three years. The upward trend has continued during the first six months of this year, with most victims arriving from Nigeria.
As captured in the report, the indicators include gender, most sex trafficking victims are women, most victims are aged between 13 and 24 years, they mostly Nigerians and psycho-physical wellness shows that victims are mostly silent and often “controlled” by other migrants who speak on their behalf or refuse to let them be interview by IOM.
Many cases of trafficking have been linked to countries in Middle East, with Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria involved, making it more difficult for the tracing of such victims as most of the countries don’t have embassies in Nigeria.

How a victim was sold for N1.5m to a soldier in Oman

By Juliana Francis

Going further, she said: “The job was supposed to be an interim one. I was to work, maybe, six months at most and return to Nigeria. These Oman people have agents in Nigeria recruiting Nigerians. I was told not to worry about money for visa and ticket, the job comes with flight arrangements. I was asked only to bring my passport and the next thing I know was that I was in Oman. I sincerely and strongly believe that those agents use the power of hypnotism on victims. Once they discuss with you, you wouldn’t be able to say no to their offers. “They didn’t allow me to say goodbye to my friends or family. I was sold to a soldier. Most Oman men are soldiers, they are hardly educated and they also don’t believe in women being educated.
The family I was given to as house help bragged that a graduate was their house help. We worked non-stop. They don’t give us food and wouldn’t cloth us properly.” She explained that part of her job was to clean the inside and outside of her employer’s building. And with buildings in With reactions and startling narrations still emerging following Saturday Telegraph’s report titled Middle East Evil: Human traffickers now trick victims, sell their organs’ a week ago, some Nigerians have come out to share their horror stories regards trafficking. Among those who have come out to talk about how they were tricked and trafficked to the Middle East is a woman based in Ibadan, Oyo State, who wishes to be simply identified as Modinat.
Modinat said that she was trafficked by someone close to her and that her sojourn in the Middle East country bodering UAE, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, was an eye opener. During her stay there, she discovered that most Nigerians ladies there were trafficked by friends, in-laws and shockingly, some by their own parents. According to her, aside from Nigerians that have been trafficked to Oman for degrading and dehumanising jobs, many Nigerian ladies are also there, being used as sex slaves. Narrating her story, Modinat said that after her final exams, while waiting for her NYSC call-up letter, she thought it would be good to get a temporary job. She thereafter had a chat with a friend who sold the idea of going to Oman to get a teaching job to her and from what her friend said, the teaching job would come with a fantastic salary and accommodation.

“The job was supposed to be a teaching job. I was told that it would be an after school teaching for a couple’s children. When I got there, they told me that the agent in Nigeria had sold me for N1.5m. I was going to be housemaid. I couldn’t believe it. I told them there must have been a mistake. They forced you to do stuffs and video you,” Modinat began. According to Modinat, 95 percent of trafficked Nigerians in Oman are graduates who were tricked into abandoning their education for so-called greener pastures, which are not really there. Oman usually high, she was cleaning outside of the building one day when she fell and started bleeding through her nostrils and ears. However, her injured condition did not move her employers in any way and Modinat said it was at that stage that something inside her snapped and she told them she wanted to go back to Nigeria.
For some reasons, her employers were having none of that as she was beaten on many occasions and threatened with death. Modinat said: “I told them to kill me, but they should ensure that my corpse was returned to Nigeria. I told them that I was a graduate and into activism. That my people would get them arrested for treating me like an animal.” The angry employer dragged her to the soldier that bought her and her employer told the soldier that Modinat was stubborn.
She said she was subjected to another round of beating and the soldier used an iron rod to attack her, apparently with the aim of beating some sense into her. “He hit me on my head, body and everywhere. He said he was going to kill me. I’m a Muslim and Oman people are Muslims too. They speak Arabic and I understand Arabic. When he was beating me, I was chanting Arabic. His mother was there. “At a point, the rod broke into two; he wanted to use the sharp edge to slash my throat, I grabbed and held the rod. In the process, the rod slashed my finger, it almost fell off. Blood from the finger splashed everywhere.
I splashed it on his face, clothes and body. It was at that point his mother intervened, asking him if he wanted to kill me,” she narrated. About two days after the attack, Modinat’s hands became swollen and she was in great pain. Eventually, she was taken to hospital where doctors battled to attach the finger as several times after attaching the finger each time, it would fall off. She was told that only one solution was left: that the finger would have to be cut off – but she refused to go down that route. “I told them that I came to Oman complete, I want to leave the country complete.

The soldier who bought me had a brother, who is a policeman. He knows the law and told his brother that he could get into trouble over the way he was treating me. It was the policeman who took me to hospital and paid for everything. At a point, I was no longer having sensation on that finger; it was dead. Whenever I tried to hold something, the item would fall. The fin- One of the men is a cab driver who told me that he sold his car in order to raise money for visa and flight ticket. The second guy is a graduate, who, unable to secure a job for years in Nigeria, was told that there was job at Oman.” Since he was told good accommodation awaited him in Oman, Raymond bought some Nigerian foodstuffs that would last him for about six months, because according to his appointment letter, he was going to be employed as a security guard in an oil company. He and the two other men were stopped at Oman airport by immigrations officers and told that their visas were fake, interrogated like common criminals and detained.
“We showed them our appointment letters, sent to us by our prospective employers in Oman but the immigration officers told them the addresses were fake and that such companies do not exist in Oman. The immigration officers advised us to contact our families in Nigeria to send money to us for our return tickets. We tried the agent’s phone number, all to no avail. I had to send a message across to my father, to do everything to raise money and send to me, I didn’t want to rot in Oman jail. My dad had to sell my mother’s piece of land, in order to buy my return ticket. I left the other two men in Oman,” he lamented.
A man, who introduced himself as Abel, residing in Bariga, Shomolu area of Lagos State, also had something to say about the report. “When I read the story, I was scared and worried. We have been trying frantically for months to get across to my wife’s friend in Oman. The last time we heard from her, she said things were not as she was led to believe. For months now, we have not heard from her and her phone is no longer going through.

We don’t know whether she’s alive or dead. How can you help us to locate her?” “Oman people do not like or respect Nigerians. They don’t even respect the Nigerian government. They feel they can kill Nigerians and get away with it. They are somehow careful with citizens of other countries, but not Nigerians. I urge our government to up its game in securing lives of Nigerians in the Diaspora,” she concluded. Raymond is another trafficking victim who was defrauded by agents using Oman. According to him, he had a plan of getting a job, making some money after his Ordinary National Diploma (OND) with which he wanted to sponsor himself through Higher National Diploma (HND). Then a friend alerted him about the availability of a job in Oman and he was linked to an agent.
The job was supposed to come with fantastic salary and accommodation but he was expected to raise over N1million for visa and flight ticket. Looking for a way out, Raymond had to sell a motorcycle he was using for commercial business and as well his generator among other valuables and even borrowed to complete the fee. “I was still trying to raise money for the visa, when my supposed Oman employer sent me an employment letter.
I became worried and desperate; the letter stated that I should resume at a certain date but I had not raised the money for ticket. I eventually got money and was taken by a man, clearly an agent and a fraudster, to the airport. This agent has a house in Osogbo and when I got to the airport, I discovered there were two other young men travelling to Oman through this same agent. ger was injected several times to bring it back to life,” Modinat recalled. She would later use the phone of one of the Nigerian servants in Oman, who had hacked into the Wi-Fi of her employer, to get a message across to her family. She narrated her ordeal and even sent pictures of her almost-severed finger and her family in Nigeria reported to the authorities how Modinat was deceived and trafficked by a friend.

That so-called friend of her and other agents were arrested and taken to the Lion Building Police Station on Lagos Island and working on the confessions of the agents, Modinat was repatriated to Nigeria. According to her, she wants everyone to be alert about traffickers, saying she has not ceased fighting and campaigning for their return with at least 17 trafficked ladies having returned to Nigeria through her own efforts.

 

 CONCLUDED