10,000 prostitutes overwhelm Nigerian Embassy in Italy

By Nigerian Compass

OVERWHELMED by the challenge in stamping out the illicit sex trade involving more than 10,000 Nigerian girls in Italy, the Nigerian Embassy in Rome said its major headache was how to convince the prostitutes to look for an alternative business.

The embassy claimed that the regular enlightenment programmes it was holding with the ‘bad ambassadors’ had  not yielded positive results over the years as more girls continued to embrace the trade.

Sex hawking as a trade had always been a booming business in Italy and more than 90 per cent of Nigerian girls in the trade were from Edo State and its environs.

Investigations showed that the driving force for the prostitutes was the fear of the future and the responsibilities of those involved in it to their families in Nigeria.

A senior official at the Consular Section of the embassy, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that campaigns by the embassy and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) against the trade had yielded little or no results.

The official said: “After some serious discussions with embassy staff, one question we have not been able to answer that the girls often ask is about what else they can do, since there are no jobs here and the situation is worse at home.

“They make us to understand that going home for them was worse and because of their poor level of education and the responsibility on their shoulders, we have not been able to talk them out of the illicit trade.’’

The official also confirmed that there was a strong racket between the Italian embassy in Nigeria and the people behind the illicit trade.

According to the official, most of the girls have documents to stay and “we begin to wonder how they got those papers from government officials in Italy.

He said: ‘’The girls are not into serious crime, but they continue to embarrass us by the way they cheapen themselves and bring bad image to the country.

‘’It is not that the Italian community cares about what they do, because they need the services of these free girls, but the way they debased them is a source of concern to us.

“The Italian men do not show them respect, they do not take them to hotels, they do it at any available place and pay and move on. It could be in the corner, car or bush even during day time.”

Mercy Uyi Antonio, a resident of Rome from Edo, said she saw nothing wrong with the business as the girls were just trying to survive.

Although she said she left Nigeria as a desperate person who did everything, including prostitution, to survive, she had left the trade and married an Italian.

Her words: ‘’I am happier now with a baby girl. I know what I passed through. There was no help from anywhere and home and back here I became a bread-winner for my siblings.

‘’What I think the young girls need is not condemnation but good policies that can encourage them to come home. We hear all kinds of stories from home that things are not working, there is so much suffering.

‘’So, it is better to suffer here by prostituting and help people at home. It is not an easy job but it is done with a lot of stress and fear of diseases. It is risky. I thank God I survived it.’’

Antonio said her husband was one of her customers before they got married and that they have been living happily together.

Also speaking, a Nigerian resident in Rome, Mr. George Ugwu, said the trade had remained the moral burden that Nigerians in Italy had to cope with.

Ugwu said: ‘’We are all hustling to make ends meet. The girls say they are using what they have to survive the harsh economic realities in the country. Even now the problem has increased as there are no jobs in Europe because of the economic meltdown.

‘’In fairness, the girls are not disturbing anybody. The Italian men say they like our women because they are sexy, friendly and affordable. Many of them have papers to stay and the sex trade is restricted to rural areas.”

According to him, the illicit sex was being driven by the fact  that an average Italian was scared of marrying their women because of the high rate of divorce which favoured the women.

He said: ‘’Because they can get cheap sex from our people, they enjoy it and avoid their own women who are very serious when they are in a relationship and usually not for money but for real love.

‘’When you mess up, they sue for divorce and the law protects the women more.”

Another embassy worker said NGOs from Nigeria and other concerned groups “have been working with the Nigerian mission in Italy on ways to solve the problem but what will the girls do that will bring them huge money like the sex trade remain the question.

‘’Some came crying that they were tricked, we tried to intervene, but they had huge debts to pay and were unwilling to go back.

‘’There was a particularly case of two undergraduates who claimed they were tricked to come and work in a saloon and restaurant in Rome, only to find that it was the sex trade.

‘’The embassy intervened and offered them ticket to go back home but they refused.”

More than 30,000 of the 80,000 Nigerians residents in Italy have valid documents.