A Delta State-based woman identified simply
as Madam Success has been reportedly arrested and remanded in Anambra State for
her alleged role in luring four university female students into prostitution in
her state.
Madam Success was on Friday arraigned before
the Children, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Magistrate Court in Awka, where
she was denied bail and also remanded.
FACTUAL NAIJA NEWS gathered that the victims, four
female students (names withheld), were lured by Madam Success from Akwa Ibom
State to Agbor in Delta State, after initially deceiving them with employment
offers.
The female students aged between 13 and 15
years, were said to have been promised job offers as sales girls in Delta by
Madam Success but were allegedly put in a brothel and made to sleep with at
least five men a day.
However, the Anambra State Commissioner for
Women and Children’s Welfare, Mrs Ify Obinabo, reportedly rescued the four
female students in Onitsha, from where their trafficker had camped them en
route Delta. The trafficker was also arrested, sources said.
The media assistant to Obinabo, Chidimma
Ikeanyionwu, told journalists that the commissioner, working with men of the
Nigeria Police, stormed a motor park in Onitsha on a tip-off, and rescued the
girls while also arrested the trafficker in the process of their boarding a bus
to Delta State.
Ikeanyionwu, in a press statement,
disclosed that Madam Success was on Friday arraigned before the Children,
Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Magistrate Court in Awka, where she was denied
bail and also remanded.
The female students, while narrating their
experiences to newsmen, stated that the woman socialite had promised them
employment offers.
“Auntie Success told us that she has a job
opportunity for us in Agbor, Delta State, where we will be selling drinks in a
beer parlour, but on getting there, we discovered that it was prostitution work
they brought us to do,” the students said.
They spoke further, “The men pay the sum of
N1,000 or N2,000 directly to our madam, who only give us N400 every day for
feeding. The direct payment to Madam Success made it difficult for us to have
any cash at hand.
“These dresses (skimpy clothes) were bought
for us from the proceeds which people pay to our madam.”
The girls who claimed that it was in their
quest to secure their school fees that they got lured into the act maintained
that they had made several unsuccessful attempts to escape but were always
caught and punished severely.
“After the punishment, we were taken to a
herbalist who forced us to take an oath that we would never run away or we
would die,” they narrated.
The Police Public Relations Officer for
Delta State Command, DSP Bright Edafe, could not be reached for comments on the
incident as of the time of filing this report.