The latest trick, which is also new face of human
traffickers is organ harvesting, while their new destinations is now the middle
east, with focus on an Arab country called Oman.
Since that publication, new telegraph has not stopped
receiving phones from people who wanted to know how to reach beloved ones at
Oman and those that wanted to share their experiences, so as to alert other
unsuspecting Nigerians about nightmares in Oman.
The latest caller presently is Busayo. She is among 35
ladies that returned from Oman; other Nigerian ladies are still out there,
looking for ways to leave.
According to Busayo, one really needs to be cautious
and careful if she wanted to leave her madam or boss, in order to avoid being
killed.
She said: “I had to lie to my madam Sherifat that my
child was sick in Nigeria and that I needed to go and check on him. Our madams
are usually in possession of our visas and passports. If they don’t hand those
items to you, you wouldn’t be able to travel. Once you landed in Oman, those
items are forcibly collected from you.
“I cried for days to make them believed my story. I
didn’t eat for three days. Normally, if you want to leave, you must not eat or
your Oman bosses could poison you. A Nigerian lady died in a plane to Nigeria.
When she was leaving, about to board, her madam gave a pizza. She died in the
plane before it got to Nigeria. The lives of Nigerians are not worth much to
citizens of Oman. Many of our ladies are dying in Oman and many are stark
raving mad.”
Another shocking revelation from Busayo, is that she
was tricked and trafficked by a pastor. She said that in her wildest
imagination, she wouldn’t have believed that a man of God would trafficked her.
Men of God are really symbols of piety and trust. And because of Nigerians
dispositions towards pastor, this pastor would continue to lure and trafficked
gullible Nigerian ladies.
Although she doesn’t know the pastor’s full name and
the name of his church, she, however, said that she could locate the church at
Ikotun Egbe, Lagos State. She also said that the cleric is popularly called
Pastor Solomon.
The Chief Executive Officer, Women Advocate Research
and Documentation Centre (WARDC), Dr Abiola Akiyode, who has taken Busayo under
her wings and presenting trying to rehabilitate her, vowed to leave no stones
unturned in tracking and arresting the said the suspected pastor.
Recollecting how she came to meet the pastor, Busayo,
a hair stylist, said that she had been saving for years in order to travel to
Dubai.
Her heart latched onto Dubai after a friend, Kehinde,
also a stylist, went to work in Dubai for a year to work and returned. The
friend appeared to have made good money. Busayo believed that she too was
hardworking, she could do better.
She recounted: “I asked Kehinde how the country was,
she said it was a good country. No, I didn’t ask her why she came back.”
She started making plans to travel, another friend
told her that he knew a pastor who could help her to facilitate her travelling
documents. The friend also told her that the pastor had been assisting a lot of
people to travel overseas.
Busayo said: “I told the pastor that I wanted to go to
Dubai to work. He asked why Dubai. He said that there are several good
countries where I could work and receive good salary. He said he could help me
to get Oman Visa. I will go there to work as house help and that the salary was
350, dollars. I felt the money was good, I said okay. He told me that
everything would cost me N250, 000, but at the end of the day, paid more than
that. While I paid Pastor Solomon here, I didn’t know that he had sold me for
300,000 dollars.”
Busayo embarked on the journey to Oman in January 23,
but the travelling process started in October 2016. The visa took almost three
months to be readied.
Busayo said: “Pastor Solomon convinced me to go to
Oman; I didn’t know it was a country that uses people, especially Nigerians as
slaves. I stayed at mascot for two months, before I was taken to Salala. The
people that bought me are like a central office or company. That’s where you
will land and from their they would assign you to a madam or master, where you
would work. Although Pastor Solomon told me that the salary would be 350,
dollars, when I got there, it was just 150 dollars. We heard that Nigerian
agents are given the balance of the money. At the central office, an Igbo girl,
Blessing, works with the Oman office.
“People of Oman are a bunch of lazy people; they can’t
do anything without house helps, yet they are very wicked people. They worked
us to the bones and when you complain, you are beaten mercilessly.”
She was given to a family of eight. The name of her
madam is Sherifat. She described the house of her madam as a mansion, with
rooms, but she was made to sleep outside.
“I don’t have a room, I was asked to upstairs. It’s
like a balcony outside,” recalled Busayo. “Once a maid arrives, the madam would
be nice to her, but after a week, she would show her true colour. I was among
35 Nigerian ladies that returned from Oman last week. I stayed almost 10 months
there. You’re not allowed to see anyone. The central office, which bought us
and assigned us, used to beat us whenever we go to complain of the workload.
You go to bed late and woke up early to start working nonstop.”
Busayo, who said that other Nigerian ladies were
unlucky to be trafficked into sex slavery in Oman, described herself as lucky.
She said that she was made to wash several cars, gates
to the house, clothes, cooking, amongst others. Although she was in charge of
cooking, she was often starved.
She said: “I couldn’t cook and steal some to eat
because a CCTV was installed to monitor everything I do. My madam, Sherifat, is
a very wicked woman.”
When she realized that she could no longer cope and
needed to leave, Busayo came up with the ruse that her child was sick and
desperately needed. Initially, Sherifat refused to release her by handing over
her passport and visa, but she, however, capitulate after Busayo told her that
she would return after making sure her child was alright.
“God knows I’m not going back. Sherifat owed me three
months’ salary. I told her that I didn’t have money, that she should use part
of my money with her to pay my flight ticket. She did; she all that because she
believed I would return.”
The lady, who revealed that male bosses forced their
Nigerian into having sex with them, said that her boss, Sherifat’s husband,
called Hammed, tried such moves on her.
She threatened to attack and report to the police.
“Since then, he kept away from me. There are many Nigerian ladies trafficked
into prostitution.” she said.
Busayo said that many ladies in Oman, has different
horrible stories of survivals to tell. She told the story of a Nigerian lady,
who wanted leave after working with her Oman madam for a year and five months.
The woman took her to where she was supposed to buy ticket for her and handed
her over to the police. The madam told the police that the lady stole her gold.
“She was locked up in prison for two months and forced
to bath with salt water,” said Busayo.
She added: “Oman is not a good country; they hate and
call us slaves. We are even forced to water trees. Some Nigerian ladies are
working in different farms in Oman, milking cows from morning till night. When
you hear Oman, please just run for your life.”
Akiyode, who was visibly troubled by the story of Busayo,
worried that if nothing was done to rehabilitate victims running away from
Oman, and an assistance giving them to embark a fresh start, these victims
could very well go back to Oman.
Thus without much ado, Akiyode, urged Busayo to come
to her office with other 34 girls that returned from Oman with her. Akiyode’s
plan is simple: to rehabilitate and get them government’s intervention, which
would help them to start a fresh start. According to her, most victims could go
back to their lives of slavery, if they failed to have a source of livelihood.
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