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A Voice For the Voiceless

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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Resources > Global Issues > Nigeria – Traff... > Background on Tra... > Berta's Story

Berta's Story

Much of the information about trafficking in Nigeria has come from a small group of young women, who have managed to evade the clutches of the traffickers. The Advocacy Project was able to meet three of them during a mission to Nigeria, with the help of our local partner, the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON). We will call them Berta, Sonia and Rachel.

Sonia and Berta escape the traffickers.

Berta comes from the small town of Sapele in the Delta State where she lives with her sister. Life is difficult in Sapele, she says. Anyone making a monthly income of 5,000 Naira ($50) is considered wealthy.

Berta is a hairdresser by trade but has yet to finish her apprenticeship. That will take money, so she was interested when a passing acquaintance named Onome approached her and asked if she would like to work with his sister, who owned a hairdressing shop in Germany. He promised that Berta would earn enough money to buy her apprenticeship (known as "freedom").

Berta accepted the offer. She traveled to Lagos, and was then driven to the Ghanaian capital of Accra. Here she met her trafficker, a "Mr Shanti," who flew with her to Abidjan and then to Paris. From Paris, they continued on to Milan. Only then did Berta realize she was in Italy, not Germany.

From Milan, they went by train to Florence, where Onome's sister met them. In the parlance of trafficking she is a "Madam"-a former prostitute who had paid off her own debt to the traffickers and graduated to a pimp.

Berta's Madam was tough. She told Berta that she was expected to work as a prostitute on the streets. She gave Berta skimpy clothes-hotpants and a revealing brassiere-and told her to get to work. Berta refused. The stand-off began. It might have been funny had it not been so frightening. Here was this 23-year-old woman, alone in Europe for the first time without papers, fighting jetlag, without even proper clothes. No one had told her to dress for a European winter.

She gave Berta skimpy clothes - hotpants and a revealing brassiere - and told her to get to work. Berta refused. The stand-off began.

 For eight days, Onome's sister tried to force Berta into prostitution, and for eight days Berta stubbornly refused. Then another girl who was living in the house (selling T-shirts, not her body) told Berta of a group in Florence that might help. She took Berta to the address and then left her.

Free from the Madam, Berta stayed for a month with her good Samaritans and then returned to Lagos with a ticket paid for the International Organization of Migration (IOM). Berta is one of the lucky ones. She was able to break free. Most do not.

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