I Cannot Marry An Igbo Man Because They Are Too Nosy - Tonto Dikeh (Page 86)

Dirty details of young Nigerian {Edo} girls being sent to Europe for prostitution
By Mudiaga Ofuoku

Itohan Emasuen ( real names changed to protect her), a 15-year-old virgin, who lived with her mother at Ogbeide Street, Benin, was determined to complete her secondary school education last year. But her mother had a different plan. She wanted her to go to Italy instead to "do work", a euphemism now popular in Benin, capital of Edo State, for the booming sex-export trade. Emasuen is from a family of five. Her father died in 1997. Her mother kept the family going with what she earned selling roast plantains at Uselu market. She considered that sending her daughter to Italy was the surest way out of the problem the family faced. But Emasuen refused. She would not "do work" in Italy. . One morning, Newswatch learnt in Benin, her mother tongue-lashed her and threw her out of the family home. Emasuen agonised over her motherFs action. Reluctantly, she walked back to her hours later to say she was ready to do her bidding and go to Italy. Her sponsor,as the flesh merchants are called, was Osahon, a man in his middle 40s. He specialises in procuring young girls for prostitution in Torino and Palermo in Italy. Emasuen's mother pledged the late husband's plot of land and only house to Osahon as collateral. The daughter was also required to pay Osahon some amount of money later in Italy. The virgin girl was also forced to take an oath that would forbid her from making trouble with either her sponsor or her "hosts" in Italy. The oath was prepared with her pubic hair, one of her underwears and her finger and toe nails. She also fulfilled two other conditions. Osahon used her as a house girl for one month. He also slept with her to
"perfect" her. "Perfecting" a recruit is a standard rule, if the sponsor is a man.   According to a family source, Emasuen wept bitterly the day she was deflowered by her sponsor. But the mother consoled her by painting a very rosy picture of how the familyFs life would soon change for the better, for just that single sacrifice the daughter had made. She told her that with money from Italy, she would build houses in choice areas of
Benin and become herself a landlady like her mates in town. Her brothers and sisters would live well and get good education. And she, the mother, would also become a proud owner of jewellery and expensive wrappers. Emasuen left for Italy more than a year ago. But within nine months of "doing work" in Torino, a den of Edo prostitutes in Italy, the familyFs circumstances have changed dramatically. ashawo no be work ooo   The girl is now building a twin storey house on Ogbeide Street (see picture). Not far from there is a big plot of land she recently bought for an undisclosed amount of money. Her mother no longer sells roast plantains. She now supplies sacks of garri to customers around town with a new pick-up van. "The woman is truly in heaven," said a source in her street. The achievements of Emasuen in just nine months of prostitution in Italy are modest compared to those of another teenage girl simply named Ame in Agho Street. She too is based in Torino. Ame has an attractive house in Agho
estimated to cost N10 million. The compound has a borehole. When there was an acute water scarcity in Benin as a result of the two-month industrial action by workers of the Edo State Urban Water Board, ESUWB, entire neighbourhood flocked to Ame's compound to fetch water. Many of them asked Newswatchto thank Ame on their behalf for her "goodness." Said one of the women with a child strapped to her back: "I pray that my daughter," pointing to the child on her back "should grow up soon to go to Italy like Ame." Ame has other property in town. She also owns several commuter buses and a car mart where she sells used Mercedes Benz, Toyota and other cars. The face of Benin City, noted in the past for ancient houses in some areas, is rapidly changing thanks to teenage Benin girls who are "doing work" in Italy.    It was authoritatively learnt that an average home in Benin has a minimum of two girls in Italy hmmm na wa oo na so dey lik ashawo work reach. In many places in the city, old family houses are being or have been replaced with modern structures financed by these girls. The girls have preferences for the government reserved area, GRA, Ogida, Upper Sakponba, Evbuotubu, College Road, Goodwill, Asoro, and other choice locations in the city. They also own nearly 90 percent of the commuter buses that
ply the municipal routes of the city. "These people...have tried and helped this country to grow. All these cars and buses you are seeing today are brought in
by these people, whatever way they earn their money, whether legitimately or through prostitution," said Nosakhare Isekhure, chief priest of Omo N'Oba Erediauwa, the Oba of Benin. Isekhure told Newswatch in his palace that but for the efforts of these people who go to Italy and other European countries, there would have been greater economic hardship and more crimes in Benin and other parts of the country. The girls also send their siblings to good secondary schools and make their university education extremely comfortable. Some of these kids attend Igbinedion Educational Centre, a school for children of the rich. The girls also belong to powerful secret societies, among them "Asigidi" and "Owegbe" through which they flaunt their social connections and wealth. Nobody who crosses a memberFs path is ever spared the ordeal of at least two days in detention at the Criminal Investigation Department, CID, Benin. Said Nosa Osagiede, a secondary school teacher in Benin: "It's very easy for a member to deal with you. She goes to the CID and tells a policeman: You have to handle one fellow for me, officer. I am an Akatarian'." "Akatarian" is the popular term in Benin for one who has been to Europe, particularly Italy, and made so much money. The "Akatarian" girl gives the officer the address of the "offender" and some dollars and he does her bidding. The girls flaunt their wealth at wedding ceremonies and funerals. Fridays provide the girls, popularly called "Italos", a chance to show off. The "Italos" hire "home girls" as mourners at funerals. They are paid generous fees. But a lucky home girl hired as a mourner may get sponsored to Italy for prostitution eventually. "If you see one mourning, you know it is a typical case of the outsider who cries louder than the bereaved," said a source. Newswatch confirmed the interesting spectacle on Uselu-Ugbowo Road, May 28. "It is such a serious problem we have in Benin now, I mean this Italy syndrome," said Dem Omokhodion, a senior lecturer in the department of sociology and anthropology, University of Benin, UNIBEN. Omokhodion, a Bini, is not the only person
who finds the trend particularly worrisome. His fellow Bini under the umbrella of the Edo Cultural Association in Italy, ECA, are worried by the increasing number of young Edo girls who now abandon school for prostitution in the streets of Italy. In a recent letter to Erediauwa, their monarch, the association appealed to him to do something about the matter because the teenage girls were bringing "disgrace" on Edo people in Italy. The case of teenage girls is pathetic enough, but Newswatch learnt in Benin city that husbands send their wives to "do work" in Italy too. A housewife who left for Venezia in Italy in 1997 came back last year and bought a villa in GRA for the family. She also bought the husband who sent her there a Mercedes Benz car and then went back "to work." "In most cases," said a local prostitute at Iyaro, "the men prefer their wives to have two or three kids by them first before leaving for Italy, because they believe y and this has been found to be true y that after their wives have slept with so many men they might not be able to bear children again. When they return all they have for the rest of the marriage is just fun." An Italy-bound girl is also required to learn to read and write in the one or two months it takes to get her there by the sponsor, because a good number of the girls are illiterates. They must also learn to sign the signatures of the persons whose travel documents they intend to use for the Italy trip. These rules are necessary because a girl might be asked relevant questions at the point of arrival in
Europe. The scramble to Italy among Benin girls has brought business boom for both oracles and pastors of some pentecostal churches in the city. The girls consult oracles to know their fate in Italy. If the oracle says a girl cannot make it in Italy, she petitions "our ancestors" to reverse the bad fate. An oracle, in the circumstance, can ask for as much as N10,000.00 to get "the ancestors" to intercede on her behalf "Even the churches are not left out. Pastors, " a source very knowledgeable in the business, told the magazine, "play oracles in some churches nowadays. They ask these girls to bring fowls, eggs, goats, yams and palm oil most times. Now it is very common to see a pastor performing sacrifice, and carrying a portion of the magic to the main road or T-junction in the dead of night. Sometimes the pastor carries the magic into the forest where he asks the girl to strip and bathe her with it." Desperate to get their girls there, some parents go beyond merely pledging their houses as collateral. They also sell them outright. Sam Igbe, a Benin chief who led a delegation of his colleagues to Ibrahim Coomassie, the then inspector-general of police in Lagos, over the 65 Edo women deported from Italy for prostitution, said of the trend: "Some of us sell our land, some our houses for about N400,000 to send our children abroad. We are embarrassed and we want to do something about it; either stopping it all or doing something so that more of our women should not go." Seventy-four Nigerians were actually deported. The rest came from Delta, Imo, Anambra, Enugu, Osun and Cross River States. Immigration officials allegedly collude with the sponsors { the sex ring masters. They are said to ask for between N150,000.00 and N200,000.00, if the travel documents used by a recruit belong to another person. If they are validly owned by the recruits, the officials allegedly ask for between N80,000.00 and N100,000.00. "Once the deal is sealed," said one of the deportees who spoke to Newswatch on condition of anonymity, "the officials go out of their way to meet their own end of the deal by taking us into the plane themselves. We normally take Alitalia flight." One Peters, an assistant public relations officer of the immigration department, denied the allegation. "It's not
true that our officials collude with the prostitutes," he said. Peters declined to tell Newswatch his full name. In addition to Palermo, Torino and Venezia, the other Italian cities and towns where the girls end up for prostitution are Rome, Napoli, Milan, Florence, Genova, Genoa, Padova and Verona. Some of them are also taken to the Belgian cities of Brussels, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Ghent and the coastal town of Blankenburge. In the Netherlands, they are mainly found in Amsterdam. On their arrival there, the girls or their procurers call their "hosts." The girls are then picked up by these hosts and taken to different brothels."It is not easy to find these prostitutes for deportation," Michel Deelen, press attache at the Dutch Embassy, Lagos, told Newswatch. It is a different ball game with Italian hosts, made up of pimps and clients. There are two types of clients: those who have made advance booking for the girls, and those who come to negotiate with the agents to take the girls away for "work." With the second group, the transaction goes something like this: "Sir, I don't know you, but I do have a girl I want to sell. She is good-looking, you can see for yourself. You pay $60,000" A hard-bargaining client may have the girl for not less than$50,000, if her "vital statistics" are okay. "Sponsors," said an insider, "prefer to sell to strangers because they make a lot of profit from that." Isekhure told New-watch:"It's so dehumanising. It's like a cartel. There are those who recruit over from here and hand over to a final person in Italy. It's a chain of transaction." But in some cases the girls in Italy pay the "sponsors" over there to come home to Benin to bring their younger ones to beef up their earnings for their families. "It is a modern form of slavery. They are used as slaves by gangs that make a lot of revenue from them," said Christian Van Driessche, the Belgian ambassador to Nigeria. He told Newswatch in his office in Lagos, that the gangs in his country were dominated by Albanians. Time magazine of December 7, 1987, reported that " a foreign prostitute in the Netherlands can earn up to $100,000.00 a year for her procurer but usually gets only a small portion of that for herself." The girls are also used as house slaves in Italy. They are locked up by their "masters" or "madams" during the day and released for "work" only at night. "We arrive there from our squatter camps around 10.30p.m. dressed in our transparent outfits. By 11.30 p.m., market has started fully. A good market night can fetch you between £30 and £50. If you are so lucky you might get up to £80. But that's very rare. But you hand what you have realised to madam. Sometimes you don't even get up to £100. Depends,"said a source. If the sex hawkers also called "shentros" are under the control of "madam", the agreement is to pay back between £50,000 and £70,000 over time from daily earnings. The prostitutes are sometimes under the control of their boyfriends who may also have come to Nigeria from Italy to recruit them. Some of them also sponsor their boyfriends there to live with them in their squatter camps stupid purey boys . The girls celebrate their "freedom" from their madams or masters by holding parties. Drinks and food are served lavishly and a "certificate of discharge" is issued to the "graduand." chei!! una dey get certificate 2    They now become their own "mistresses", and are therefore free to come home to Benin to recruit young girls themselves. "Sometimes, a shentro can send money to her mother in Benin to send in her younger sister," said a source.  heredity lolsssss The prostitutes have spaces allocated to them for hawking. More often than not, there is a clamour among them for good space in order to get customers. The competition generates so much antagonism and rancour, often leading to frequent fierce fights in which "knives, bottles and sharp objects are used." Some fight with fetish means to snatch customers from their fellow hawkers. Some of the extremely desperate ones among the girls employ diabolical means to harm their rivals. They write to their mothers back home to get a witch doctor to prepare black magic for them. These are sent to them by special postage to fight their rivals with. In some cases, the witch doctor is
flown there by the girl to prepare a special black magic called "Owuho", named after the he-goat. A rival harmed by the juju smells like a he-goat and is, therefore, shunned by prospective customers. Parents also send their wards in Italy charms that will make their customers spend more money on them. These objects are sent every day at the NIPOST, Airport Road, Benin. For 20 minutes recently, a Newswatch reporter watched as such objects, including anointing oil, powder, perfumes and some indescribable objects were packaged along with video and audio cassettes and sent off as special packages to girls in Italy. A. O.Modupe, area postal manager, refused to tell Newswatch how much the post office makes from such services. He directed the magazine to Pat Ofeinmu, the public relations manager, who also said he could not comment. But a source close to the two senior staff said: "What you saw is exactly what is happening now. It forms the major source of our revenue today. We make up to a million naira a week sending those objects alone. Normal postal services are dead throughout the country because of the e-mail revolution. But thank God, we in Benin are lucky." The female source who begged for anonymity went on: "Those cassettes you saw bear instructions on how to use the charms. The instructions are in the Bini language, so that if the Italians listen to the cassettes, they won't understand." The witch doctors flown to Italy "equip" the girls with charms that can lure customers to them."Also when the
relationship between a girl and her customer has progressed to a certain level, the prostitute may put love potion in a meal she prepares for him. The white man becomes hooked to her in love like an addict to his drug. The girl ends up marrying him, and can now stay in Italy unmolested. The white man is always lured to Benin for the traditional marriage,"   said a source very close to some of the 65 deportees . Newswatch learnt that there were over a dozen such marriages in Benin last year. Tina Phillips, one of the deportees, for example, wanted to marry a white man when she was picked up
by the Italian police and put on the flight to Nigeria. She told the Weekend Observer in Benin: "I feel bad because the Nigerian ambassador in Italy refused to give visa to my white man who wanted to come to Nigeria to marry me." Van Driessche, the Belgian ambassador told Newswatch " the Edo form the bulk of Nigerians in mixed marriages with Belgians in my country." The recent deportation, according to a source among the deportees, was caused mainly by some Italian wives who complained to the Italian authorities that their husbands were being snatched away from them by Nigerian prostitutes. In its edition of September 13, 1993, Time wrote: "The dusty roads around Naples have been dotted with Nigerian prostitutes who beckon to motorists from clumps of bushes." The American magazine quoted one Vincenzo Caterini, an Italian restaurant owner as complaining that, "These Africans have destroyed our town and our livelihood. They live surrounded by trash. Their settlements breed rats. Everyone knows the women are wh*res." Sometimes the girls have what they call pyjamas party, to entertain their white customers and boyfriends in orgies, booze, and hard drugs. "It's usually fun," said a source. But it goes beyond that at other times. The girls are also procured to have sex with dogs and gorillas in front of cameras. Sex with animals pay the girls more than sex with human beings . A prostitute may get as much as £5,000.00 for sex with a dog. The money goes to her master or madam, if she hasn't been "discharged." hahahahahahha "I have heard that myself, and my wife has also told me of it. We are both terrified. I suspect that some people are doing some studies on the segxwal powers of the black race. It gives them fun, excitement, to watch animals having sex with human beings. And who knows whether they are not experimenting on fertilization and reproduction, that is, whether they are not trying to test whether the eggs of umans and the sperms of animals can produce a viable offspring?" Omokhodion of UNIBEN, wondered.
na waa oo is that why they behave like animals products of bestiality offspring of animals On the dangers involved in such an unnatural indulgence, Osato Giwa-Osagie, a professor of gynaecology and former personal physician to Ibrahim Babangida, former president of Nigeria, said: "They are two: One, segxwally transmitted diseases can be passed from one species to the other. Second, apart from the segxwally transmitted diseases that we already know, like bacterial and virus infections, there are some other infections that animals are able to withstand and sustain without dangers to themselves, but which the human being is unprepared for, and which, by this unusual contact, may now be passed on to the human." He went on: "And of course, we all heard the story about the possibility that HIV may have been transmitted from animals to man in the west or Central Africa. The people who are engaged in this unnatural act are exposing themselves to dire consequences which may not be evident now, but can become obvious at a later date." A male source in Ogbeide Street who asked for anonymity told Newswatch that his sister was a victim of a strange illness. "We sold our father's house, together with his tomb, to send her to Palermo. She was there for three years, but couldn't come back with anything. Her mates were bringing home buses, cars and other good things, but she chose to bring home one strange illness. There are warts and craw craw all over her body. We have spent over N50,000 treating her without success. We will soon ask her to vomit all the money. She told me two secrets. She said a rival harmed her with black magic. She also admitted that a dog had sex with her. Now she is at a witch doctor's place where we are still trying our last help for her. I would have liked to take you there, but it would be too embarrassing for her and the family," said the source. In some cases, some of the girls either die and are buried there by their colleagues, or come back home to Benin to die. In either case, a lavish funeral is usually held for the victim by her colleagues in Italy. Apart from disease-related deaths, the prostitutes are sometimes killed by Italian criminal gangs. One Ivie who lived on Wire Road before she left for Palermo in 1997, was allegedly killed by the mafia last year. After being raped and stabbed all over her torso, she was pushed down from a fast-moving car one night. Her mutilated body was picked up the following morning by her colleagues. Candle wax was found in her private part. She was given a decent burial there, after which her colleagues sent a picture of her mutilated body to her parents. According to one edition of Echo News, a Nigerian publication in Italy, "nearly a dozen such gruesome deaths occurred in Torino in 1994. The girls are also subjected to frequent police raids and deportation, especially if "we refuse to sleep with them for free," an insider said. There are also cases of girls allegedly "deported" by the Italian authorities but who are never received at any of the Nigerian airports. "Such girls, in truth, may have been quietly killed there," said an immigration source. Officials of the Italian embassy in Lagos refused to speak to Newswatch on the sex ring. "The ambassador is too busy to attend to you," a female secretary said each time Newswatch asked to see or speak to the ambassador . The girls are sometimes duped by their Edo boyfriends and relations. Newswatch learnt the prostitutes usually save their daily earnings with their boyfriends. When they have saved a substantial amount of money, they give it to their boyfriends to acquire property in Benin for them. But some
of the young men are smart alecs. They buy the property for themselves alone instead with the money, marry "decent" girls, [/b][/b][/s]and then relocate to other parts of Europe or the United States. there is no decent girl in Edo "Sponsors" also dupe recruits, 419-style. so these pple re into all sort of bad things.......chineke oo   After they have received so much money from the girlsF parents, they take the recruits to Cote d' Ivoire or Ghana where they ditch them. Newswatch learnt that 60 percent of the cases
entertained by a native court at 2nd Junction in Benin which meets only on Sundays are related to such frauds.A married woman taken to Italy by a female sponsor, who paid her little money after procuring the woman for sex with a dog, took the matter to that court where she pleaded that justice should be done because she was dying from a strange illness. "Now, look at all my body, I am very sick, and canFt cure myself," she complained and wept bitterly. The case is still on. In spite of these problems, the girls keep going to Italy for prostitution. The magazine learnt from several reliable sources last week that more than 50 percent of the 65 deportees are already back in Italy. Some of them were allegedly assisted by some staff of the Italian embassy. Some of the girls have written to their parents confirming their return to Italy. Tina Phillips is alleged to be one of them. Why the craze by Edo girls for prostitution in Italy and
other countries of Europe? Sources say it is caused by the biting poverty in Nigeria. "My opinion," said Christian Van Driessche, "is that it is a problem of poverty. We have more visa requests from Edo citizens than other Nigerians." But why do the Edo citizens form the majority? Are they the only Nigerians who are poor? Van Driessche: "Well, I donFt know. It beats my imagination." But Reuben Abati, a columnist on The Guardian newspaper, argued: "When the leaders themselves are prostitutes, what do you expect small girls to do? The girls are going to Italy because Edo leaders at home are not doing anything for their own people. Every Edo man who makes it in Lagos or Abuja simply minds his own business. That is not how to build a kingdom without prostitutes." Said Omokhodion: "They (girls) want to be fupper, they want to be seen to be princesses and queens, to be above everyone else. They worship money and fashion here." The craze to go to Italy actually began in the late 1980s. Some young Benin girls were taken there by Nigerian pimps to work in factories and do household chores for "kind" Italians. When they arrived there, they found that they had been deceived. To escape deportation or suffering, most of them resorted to prostitution. "But they managed to come back home with so much money after they converted it to the naira. The notion soon spread around town that their people were plucking dollars on the streets of Italy. Since then, it's no longer a matter of being lured there under false pretences, but of girls
begging to be taken there by sponsors. Only illiterates were recruited then. Now university graduates are trooping to Italy," said a Newswatch source.
Erediauwa, to whom the ECAI wrote a letter recently on the issue, also feels scandalised on behalf of his subjects and the nation. In fact, Coomassie, former inspector-general of police, and the Nigerian ambassador to Italy wrote to the Oba. Addressing a forum attended by his chiefs, Erediauwa said the problem had brought "national and international disgrace to our fellow folks of Edo State, and more especially of Benin." What upsets him most today is the constant emphasis that "Benin indigenes are in the largest proportion of all the nationals in this business overseas." Isekhure, ErediauwaFs most powerful and respected chief, is also disturbed by the problem. "It is troubling that a time may come when you might not find a marriageable girl in Edo State, "said the chief priest. What is being done? The chief priest said the palace had already begun a public enlightenment campaign to discourage parents from sending their daughters overseas for prostitution. "After all, many of those who are rich in Nigeria today never went to Italy," he said, adding , "we are also praying that the ancestors should touch the souls of these girls, and of their parents who sell their houses for this purpose." Some parents themselves are also concerned. There are cases of sons and daughters who sold their parentsF property behind their backs and went to Italy with the money. A woman in Yoruba Street, Benin, told Newswatch that her son wanted to sell his fatherFs only house after his death, but that she stopped it when she inscribed on the wall the sign: "THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE." In Benin today, this sign is common on the walls of houses. But efforts to discourage the sex export began sometime ago. Bassey Asuquo, then a colonel and military administrator of Edo State, tried with Itang, his wife, to wage a war against the business as far back as 1996. But the Association of Edo Prostitutes in Italy, AEPI, wrote several harshly worded letters to him and his wife warning them to stop the campaign. They did. Jeremiah Useni, a retired lieutenant-general and former federal capital territory minister, condemned the trade in 1997. Speaking in Abuja at a fund-raising ceremony organised by "Daughters of Abraham Foundation," a non-governmental organisation set up by Julie, his wife, to rehabilitate prostitutes, Useni promised that the Provisional Ruling Council, PRC, would discuss the matter. It would appear, however, that very serious efforts are being made internationally about the problem of prostitution. The Beijing Declaration of the 4th UN World Conference on women stressed the urgent need to take action
against "the specific form of violation of human rights of women." Trafficking in women for the purpose of segxwal exploitation is now regarded as an international organised crime by a number of European nations. A European Union, EU, ministerial conference was held in The Hague April 26, 1997 on the problem. The Dutch government provided the initiative for the meeting. The conference was attended by Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia,Hungary,Poland, Romania, Cyprus, Slovakia and Slovania. The countries "reaffirmed their commitment to maximise cooperation in the fight against trafficking in human beings, and against trafficking in women in particular in relation to countries of origin and of transit." The Netherlands ministry of justice took specific steps that same year. Winnie Sorgdrager, minister of justice, introduced a bill in parliament to curb it and improve the position of the prostitutes in her country. Her predecessor, Benk Karihats, in collaboration with Job Cohen, secretary of state, took a step further to set up a vice squad named Unit Against Human Smuggling. The squad cracks down on the pimps and clients responsible for smuggling the prostitutes, "most of whom come from the Benin city region" to the Netherlands. The maximum penalty for trafficking in people in that country is eight years. There were 80 trials in 1996; 139 in 1997 and 227 last year. Official figures for the current year are not yet released. Van Driessche told Newswatch that he also deports the prostitutes caught in his country. He refuses many of them visa when they come without proper explanation about what they are going to do in Belgium. The ambassador said: "A group from Benin came to me to say I should stop deporting their daughters, and I asked them: You want your daughters to be slaves in my country? I told them that they areused as slaves, and so I will continue to deport them." Hamisu Isah, former commissioner of police in Edo State, said of about 700 Nigerian prostitutes deported in 1996, 500 were from Benin alone. Of that number 350 were young girls. Italian authorities now scrutinise mails from Nigeria, especially from Benin. Sixty-seven parcels containing charms and fetish objects with their audio and video cassettes were returned two weeks ago. Seventy other parcels followed last week. "The new development is a big threat to our business," said a female source at the Airport Road, Post Office, Benin, last week. But the parents and relations of the prostitutes now use courier services to send parcels to their daughters and relations. Many of the girls intending to go to Italy for the trade have also discovered a new route. They pose as petty traders along the border at Ilella village in Sokoto State. They pretend to be buyers and sellers of provisions and local fruits such as mangoes and oranges. Gradually they move to Kornni town in Niger Republic on motor bikes, where they work for a few months as prostitutes at "Campement Hotel". >From there they find their way ultimately to Italy through Libya. On the home front also, the parents are lobbying the Oba chiefs to advise him to stop making an issue of their "only means of survival now." They are also petitioning "the ancestors" to make the respected monarch change his mind. "I think no matter what people do or say to stop the trade, it will continue to boom as long as that spirit of competition among the parents persists. Some parents even appeal to the ancestors to give them daughters." Newswatch reliably learnt that Emasuen's mother is preparing Osaro, her second daughter, who is almost 13, to go and "do work" in Torino.