SIR: Boko Haram – the extreme Islamic sect opposed to western civilization – has produced legions of victims. The celebrated cases of Leah Shaibu and the Chibok abductees are just a few of the victims. Among their other victims are Christians and their clergymen, moderate Muslims, business people and professionals of diverse ages and backgrounds. Many have been killed while others have fled their home communities in search of safety and greener pastures.
The crusade of the Fulani herdsmen to forcibly acquire lands in the Middle Belt and other parts of the North has swelledthis destitutepopulation.
But perhaps the most vulnerable and hopeless victims are the young Hausa girls in their teens and twenties who have been forced to migrate to the South. They have no formal education and can hardly read or write. Many barely completed primary school before the wave of insurgency andbanditry uprooted them from their homelands. Theyhave no skills beyond the hawking of furadonunuor other insignificant wares.
So, how do they fare in the South? They are no longer the saintly,naiveand beautiful young women they were back in their home states. They have exchanged their innocence for bread and shelter; made the more vulnerable by capricious and mindless men hunting for “young blood”.The more fortunate ones have ended up as house and street cleaners, hawkers and sales girls on wages far below the national minimum one. Only a few are able to secure accommodation as part of the bargain.
The less fortunate ones who have lost every sense of decency end up as prostitutes littering night club environs and hiring out themselves for meager sums barely able to sustain them. Somehow, they manage to buy T-shirts andtorn jeenstrousers to enhance their trade. At daybreak, some of them switch to their cleaning, hawking or sales girls roles – exhausted, worn out, drowsy and barely able to withstand the rigour of serious work even as another night beckons.
Yet others end up as sex slaves in the harems of “young blood” harvesters who use them for personal pleasure,trafficking or entertainment for their associates.
They exploit the victims’ desperate need for accommodation.Though rarely reported publicly, cases of human sacrifice cannot be ruled out. There are no documentations and many parents and siblings hardly know the whereabouts of their “missing” daughters and sisters. In some cases, however, helpless parents indulgently oblige their daughters who, through outright prostitution or sex slavery, have become family breadwinners.
These innocent victims of insurgency and banditry certainly need help. But who shall bell the cat: Northern State Governors and their wives, Youth andWomen ministries and agencies, Women’s Societies or public spirited Nigerians? A one-time Governor’s wife in the SouthSouth mounted a successful campaign against high class prostitution in Europe involving indigenes of that state. An ex-Vice President’s wife was also instrumental to the enactment of the anti-human trafficking act.
It is certainly not a helpless situation.If the government is unable to halt insurgency andbanditry, something can be done to halt this trend of forced prostitution and sex slavery that threatens the moral fabric and well-being of the North and Nigeria as a whole.
•By Pius Isiekwene
