How a victim was sold for N1.5m to a soldier in Oman

Going further, she said: “The job was supposed to be an interim one. I was to work, maybe, six months at most and return to Nigeria. These Oman people have agents in Nigeria recruiting Nigerians. I was told not to worry about money for visa and ticket, the job comes with flight arrangements. I was asked only to bring my passport and the next thing I know was that I was in Oman. I sincerely and strongly believe that those agents use the power of hypnotism on victims. Once they discuss with you, you wouldn’t be able to say no to their offers. “They didn’t allow me to say goodbye to my friends or family. I was sold to a soldier. Most Oman men are soldiers, they are hardly educated and they also don’t believe in women being educated.

The family I was given to as house help bragged that a graduate was their house help. We worked non-stop. They don’t give us food and wouldn’t cloth us properly.” She explained that part of her job was to clean the inside and outside of her employer’s building. And with buildings in With reactions and startling narrations still emerging following Saturday Telegraph’s report titled Middle East Evil: Human traffickers now trick victims, sell their organs’ a week ago, some Nigerians have come out to share their horror stories regards trafficking. Among those who have come out to talk about how they were tricked and trafficked to the Middle East is a woman based in Ibadan, Oyo State, who wishes to be simply identified as Modinat.

Modinat said that she was trafficked by someone close to her and that her sojourn in the Middle East country bodering UAE, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, was an eye opener. During her stay there, she discovered that most Nigerians ladies there were trafficked by friends, in-laws and shockingly, some by their own parents. According to her, aside from Nigerians that have been trafficked to Oman for degrading and dehumanising jobs, many Nigerian ladies are also there, being used as sex slaves. Narrating her story, Modinat said that after her final exams, while waiting for her NYSC call-up letter, she thought it would be good to get a temporary job. She thereafter had a chat with a friend who sold the idea of going to Oman to get a teaching job to her and from what her friend said, the teaching job would come with a fantastic salary and accommodation.

“The job was supposed to be a teaching job. I was told that it would be an after school teaching for a couple’s children. When I got there, they told me that the agent in Nigeria had sold me for N1.5m. I was going to be housemaid. I couldn’t believe it. I told them there must have been a mistake. They forced you to do stuffs and video you,” Modinat began. According to Modinat, 95 percent of trafficked Nigerians in Oman are graduates who were tricked into abandoning their education for so-called greener pastures, which are not really there. Oman usually high, she was cleaning outside of the building one day when she fell and started bleeding through her nostrils and ears. However, her injured condition did not move her employers in any way and Modinat said it was at that stage that something inside her snapped and she told them she wanted to go back to Nigeria.

For some reasons, her employers were having none of that as she was beaten on many occasions and threatened with death. Modinat said: “I told them to kill me, but they should ensure that my corpse was returned to Nigeria. I told them that I was a graduate and into activism. That my people would get them arrested for treating me like an animal.” The angry employer dragged her to the soldier that bought her and her employer told the soldier that Modinat was stubborn.

She said she was subjected to another round of beating and the soldier used an iron rod to attack her, apparently with the aim of beating some sense into her. “He hit me on my head, body and everywhere. He said he was going to kill me. I’m a Muslim and Oman people are Muslims too. They speak Arabic and I understand Arabic. When he was beating me, I was chanting Arabic. His mother was there. “At a point, the rod broke into two; he wanted to use the sharp edge to slash my throat, I grabbed and held the rod. In the process, the rod slashed my finger, it almost fell off. Blood from the finger splashed everywhere.

I splashed it on his face, clothes and body. It was at that point his mother intervened, asking him if he wanted to kill me,” she narrated. About two days after the attack, Modinat’s hands became swollen and she was in great pain. Eventually, she was taken to hospital where doctors battled to attach the finger as several times after attaching the finger each time, it would fall off. She was told that only one solution was left: that the finger would have to be cut off – but she refused to go down that route. “I told them that I came to Oman complete, I want to leave the country complete.

The soldier who bought me had a brother, who is a policeman. He knows the law and told his brother that he could get into trouble over the way he was treating me. It was the policeman who took me to hospital and paid for everything. At a point, I was no longer having sensation on that finger; it was dead. Whenever I tried to hold something, the item would fall. The fin- One of the men is a cab driver who told me that he sold his car in order to raise money for visa and flight ticket. The second guy is a graduate, who, unable to secure a job for years in Nigeria, was told that there was job at Oman.” Since he was told good accommodation awaited him in Oman, Raymond bought some Nigerian foodstuffs that would last him for about six months, because according to his appointment letter, he was going to be employed as a security guard in an oil company. He and the two other men were stopped at Oman airport by immigrations officers and told that their visas were fake, interrogated like common criminals and detained.

“We showed them our appointment letters, sent to us by our prospective employers in Oman but the immigration officers told them the addresses were fake and that such companies do not exist in Oman. The immigration officers advised us to contact our families in Nigeria to send money to us for our return tickets. We tried the agent’s phone number, all to no avail. I had to send a message across to my father, to do everything to raise money and send to me, I didn’t want to rot in Oman jail. My dad had to sell my mother’s piece of land, in order to buy my return ticket. I left the other two men in Oman,” he lamented.

A man, who introduced himself as Abel, residing in Bariga, Shomolu area of Lagos State, also had something to say about the report. “When I read the story, I was scared and worried. We have been trying frantically for months to get across to my wife’s friend in Oman. The last time we heard from her, she said things were not as she was led to believe. For months now, we have not heard from her and her phone is no longer going through.

We don’t know whether she’s alive or dead. How can you help us to locate her?” “Oman people do not like or respect Nigerians. They don’t even respect the Nigerian government. They feel they can kill Nigerians and get away with it. They are somehow careful with citizens of other countries, but not Nigerians. I urge our government to up its game in securing lives of Nigerians in the Diaspora,” she concluded. Raymond is another trafficking victim who was defrauded by agents using Oman. According to him, he had a plan of getting a job, making some money after his Ordinary National Diploma (OND) with which he wanted to sponsor himself through Higher National Diploma (HND). Then a friend alerted him about the availability of a job in Oman and he was linked to an agent.

The job was supposed to come with fantastic salary and accommodation but he was expected to raise over N1million for visa and flight ticket. Looking for a way out, Raymond had to sell a motorcycle he was using for commercial business and as well his generator among other valuables and even borrowed to complete the fee. “I was still trying to raise money for the visa, when my supposed Oman employer sent me an employment letter.

I became worried and desperate; the letter stated that I should resume at a certain date but I had not raised the money for ticket. I eventually got money and was taken by a man, clearly an agent and a fraudster, to the airport. This agent has a house in Osogbo and when I got to the airport, I discovered there were two other young men travelling to Oman through this same agent. ger was injected several times to bring it back to life,” Modinat recalled. She would later use the phone of one of the Nigerian servants in Oman, who had hacked into the Wi-Fi of her employer, to get a message across to her family. She narrated her ordeal and even sent pictures of her almost-severed finger and her family in Nigeria reported to the authorities how Modinat was deceived and trafficked by a friend.

That so-called friend of her and other agents were arrested and taken to the Lion Building Police Station on Lagos Island and working on the confessions of the agents, Modinat was repatriated to Nigeria. According to her, she wants everyone to be alert about traffickers, saying she has not ceased fighting and campaigning for their return with at least 17 trafficked ladies having returned to Nigeria through her own efforts.

Source New Telegraph

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