A senior Nigerian official says plans to rescue thousands of victims of sex trafficking have failed. Investigators went to Mali earlier this year and estimated that at least 20,000 Nigerian teenagers and women had been smuggled there and forced into prostitution.
A joint operation was then launched with Malian authorities to rescue the women. But Nigerian officials say they have not had enough co-operation from Mali.
The authorities in Mali have refused to comment on the criticism.
“I feel like committing suicide when I remember,” says Yemisi Ogoda about her journey which ended in Mali.
She was handed to a gang who demanded she repay debts for her travel.
After being beaten and locked up without food for two days, the young Nigerian agreed to work as a prostitute to try to pay the debt.
“They said they would kill me if I did not do it. Nobody will know about it, they will just kill me there, no-one will know,” she adds.
She fell pregnant, and was coerced into an abortion. The attempt failed, and, visibly pregnant, she was sold on to another gang, only managing to flee when she was left unsupervised to bathe.
Ms. Ogoda survived by begging in the streets until she managed to contact her family.
The network of migration routes that criss-cross West Africa are known to police as a “hot graveyard for migrants,” because the number who die on the way is so great.
So-called “trolley-boys,” the trafficking middlemen, run “the relay race,” passing their human cargo onwards, with promises of jobs in hairdressing and supermarkets.
After receiving reports of sexual slavery from aid workers and clergy, Nigerian officials went to Mali to investigate earlier this year.
They said were “nauseated” by what they had seen: Brothels with cubicles in which young Nigerian women, many in their mid-teens, serviced as many as 20 or 30 clients a night, in order to pay off debts incurred to the “trolley-men.”
“It is clear it is not consensual,” says Arinze Orakwue of Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP). “They have no freedom of movement. They are not allowed to go outside with you, or even to make a phone call.”
NAPTIP’s hard-hitting findings, published on 29 September, also warned of what officials described as “slave camps” in Mali’s north – brothels in the gold-mining towns of Kayes and Mopti.
Photographs seen by the BBC reveal precise locations and buildings examined by the team.
The findings were given to Malian police and Operation Timbuktu was launched.
“Operation Timbuktu will be executed with the Malian authorities, to free the girls and ensure their safe return to Nigeria,” Simon Chuzi Egede, Executive Secretary of NAPTIP, said at the time.
Months later, nothing has happened, and the trafficked teenagers and women remain in the hands of criminal gangs in Mali.
“All of us have failed,” says Mr. Orakwue, an assistant director of intelligence and communications at NAPTIP.
“The first thing that is preventing their return is support from the Malian authorities,” he says.
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