An extraordinary tale for The Telegraph from Benin City in southern Nigeria, where belief in the spirit world remains strong. In the world of African witchcraft, he is a god incarnate, a real-life king of magic whose every word is law.
Now, the latest ascendant to the throne has turned his powers to the temporal realm β by placing a curse on sex trafficking gangs sending women to Europe.
Key to the trade are groups of local witchdoctors, who frighten trafficked women into compliance by making them swear oaths to juju gods. Last month, at the behest of Nigerian police, the Oba agreed to fight fire with fire, summonsing more than juju priests to his palace and warning of divine vengeance if they carried on involvement in trafficking.
Benin City, in southern Nigeria, has long been the centre of the trade. Most travel across the Sahara to Libya, and then over the Mediterranean in people-smuggling boats. The routes used for smuggling sex workers are also used by other illegal Nigerian migrants, the vast majority of whom again come from Edo State. Trafficked women are typically duped in advance into thinking they will working in a shop or salon in Europe, and that to pay for their passage, they must swear an oath of obedience at a local juju shrine.
When they are told upon arrival in Europe that they will in fact be working in a brothel, they are warned if they try to run away, they will evoke a deadly curse. With belief in witchcraft widespread in Benin City, the threat is as effective employing a pimp to watch their every move. While most trafficked women from Edo State end up in Italy, some have surfaced in Britain. He said that Benin City links to the sex trade began in the late s, when a group of local women went as traders in Italy and found they could make more money as prostitutes.
