Heartbreaking! Nigerian Woman, Rukoyat Kemi Sold Four Times In Oman Makes A Passionate Appeal To The Nigerian Government To Rescue Her
Human Trafficking is a crime against humanity. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them. Every year, thousands of women and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad.
Nigeria is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to trafficking in persons including forced labor and forced prostitution.
Trafficked Nigerian women and children are recruited from rural areas within the country’s borders – women and girls for involuntary domestic servitude and sexual exploitation, and boys for forced labor in street vending, domestic servitude, mining, and begging.
A Nigerian woman, Najeeb Rukoyat Kemi, has pleaded with the Federal government to come to her rescue in Oman where she is being presently held in captivity.
According to the 28-year-old woman from Ikire town in Osun State, she left for Oman in November 2016, to search for greener pasture after being talked into the deal by a close friend.
However, upon arriving in the country her host seized her international passports and other vital documents then made her a housemaid.
Narrating her ordeal during an exclusive telephone chat with the President of Journalists International Forum For Migration (JIFORM), Ajibola Abayomi, the woman said within the last four years, she has been resold four times to different masters where she worked as a housemaid on monthly stipends that was never paid in most cases.
She claimed that she was traded off to her present master some months ago for 800 rials (N700, 000). Her current master placed on a monthly salary of N70,000 per month, however, she says she has been subjected to serious sexual harassment.
“At the current house I am now working, the man wants to sleep with me but I have been refusing him so he told me to go back to the office that brought me to him. I am being starved of food and kept indoor without being allowed to go out.
“I can no longer cope with this job so please I want to go back home. Kindly assist me. I have an Ordinary National Diploma from Offa Polytechnic; there are better opportunities in Nigeria. I am tired, all the money I have been getting I used to send it home to assist my younger ones,”
Kemi lamented.
Reacting to the plight of the lady, the Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Julie Okah -Donli said she was deeply concerned and shared the pain and agony of the said victim through an interview granted by the agency’s Press Officer, Mr Adekoye Vincent. He said:
“In line with its determination to continue to respond to the plight of victims, the agency solicits for information that will enable it to work with international and local partners with a view to rescuing her and ensuring her safe return to Nigeria.”
The JIFORM president said all the other vital information about the victim would be forwarded to NAPTIP for further action.
“We won’t be tired of doing this all the time. Recall that between July and September this year JIFORM was instrumental to the call for the rescue of 138 Nigerian ladies trafficked to Saudi Arabia and additional 435 women also trapped in Yemen, Oman, Lebanon and other Arab nations.
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We shall provide her details as well as other ladies to the NAPTIP and follow up on the rescue mission ditto for the prosecution of the trafficking agency involved,”
Ajibola pledged.