Husband, Wife, Native Doctor in Custody for Trafficking in Underage Girls

Adibe Emenyonu in Benin-city

The Director-General of the Edo State Migration Agency, Mr. Luck Agazuma, has disclosed that a native doctor, husband, and wife have been taken into custody for illegal trafficking of underage girls.

He said that while the native doctor was taken into custody for administering an oath to the girls, the husband and wife (names not mentioned) were detained for trafficking teenagers to Mali.

Agazuma, who disclosed while speaking to journalists yesterday, against the backdrop of accusations by commercial sex-workers of being extorted by personnel of the state migration agency, noted that: “In our raiding, we discovered that these persons and brothel operators keep underage girls.

Those persons who were involved in this act are in prison custody, including the native doctor who took them on oath. They also do organ harvesting. Even as I speak to you now, there’s a husband and a wife who just trafficked a little girl to Mali. They are all in prison custody right now.”

Speaking further, Agazuma said the agency was well funded and would not resort to extortion of any kind from sex workers because their job is to rehabilitate them back into society.

“We have had several engagements with the brothel operators. We told them we will not be after their brothel,, but they should not bring in underage people into their brothel. So if there is any form of extortion, certainly it is not from the agency I head.

In a bid to rid the state of drug trafficking and sextortion, some commercial sex workers were arrested last Monday night during a raid by officials of the Edo State Migration Agency, and reportedly profiled by officials of the agency before they were released to go home.

However, these commercial sex workers,, last Tuesday, cried out over alleged extortion, claiming that they were made to cough out between N15,000 and N50,000 before they were released.

They further claime that they were promised that the video recording during the profiling wouldn’t be posted on the internet, but were shocked that the same video was shared on social media without their faces covered as earlier promised.

They showed evidence of receipts of the payment to one Uyinmwen Uyigue.

According to one of them, “I am still in shock. I couldn’t get myself since l saw the video on social media. Edo State Migration Agency recorded us with a promise not to post the video after collecting N50,000 each, but we went ahead to post it. I have proof of money paid through PoS to them. I was shocked when friends and family members started calling,, that they saw my video on TikTok and Instagram.”

Another victim said: “On Friday evening, all these migration people (officials) raided us at Ihama Street, GRA, and arrested 30 of us. They detained us at their office and videotaped us with a promisenot to publish it after we paid N50,000 each.

“The next thing my family members saw was it and started calling us. My family said I brought shame to them and that they don’t want to have anything to do with me because of the video.”

When contacted, Mr. Uyigue confirmed collecting money from four sex workers,, but he said the money he collected was fine paid by owners of the lodge where the sex workers stay.

He said the lodge owners, under the auspices of GRA Hospitality Forum,, agreed on a fine of N50,000 for any of their girls caught in the street hawking their bodies.

According to him, “Activities of drug dealers have been a stigma to our businesses. We met with the Migration Agency, and they proved to us they meant business.

“We met as an association and decided that any lodge owner whose girl is caught outside will pay a fine of N50,000.

“The money those arrested girls paid was fine from the lodge and not to the Migration Agency.”