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.
It was 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.
