Women sacrificed to sex trade in Nigerian city

BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Nov 30 (Reuters) A family friend arranged for Gloria to leave Nigeria to work as a prostitute in Italy. Blessing was approached by an aunt. A next-door neighbour organised the trip for Adeyinka.

Thousands of women in southern Nigeria's Benin City -- a run-down port of crumbling buildings and potholed streets where power cuts are frequent and jobs scarce -- are encouraged by their desperate families to sell their bodies abroad.

''Our friend came to my house and said he could help me travel to Europe and make a lot of money. I wanted to help my mother. We are poor,'' says Gloria, who was 19 at the time and among the youngest of a family of 19 children.

She ended up in Italy after a harrowing journey across the Sahara during which several women died of hunger and thirst.

She arrived in debt, and by the time she was deported back to Nigeria after eight months working on the streets, she was still penniless, having only managed to pay some of the ,000 she owed her new madam.

''Those years were wasted. When I think about it I feel very desperate,'' said Gloria, tears smudging her make-up.

Her story is sad but not uncommon in this city.

Trafficking women for prostitution became a problem in Benin City in the mid-1980s when free-market economic reforms led to massive job losses and impoverished many Nigerians.

At that time, the northern Italian region of Piemonte had strong business ties with Nigeria. And the fear of AIDS had made local prostitutes, who were often drug-addicts, less attractive.

Today, the Nigeria-Italy prostitution trade has become a sinister, self-propagating cycle.

Some women from Benin City, who worked as prostitutes in Italy returned with enough cash to build nice houses and buy cars. Successful ex-prostitutes became madams, recruiting young women from within their own community, where they were trusted.

Now, more than 80 percent of Nigerian women trafficked abroad to work in the sex trade come from Edo state, where Benin City is located, according to United Nations estimates. The main destination is Italy.

OATHS The problem is a nationwide one: Africa's most populous country is a major source, transit route and destination for women and children who fall prey to people traffickers.

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