ÁMBITOS DE CONSIDERACIÓN PARA EL ESTUDIO DEL CLIMA SOCIAL.

housing, transportation, food, clothing, utilities and other expenses they never thought about in the village. With the urban challenges some allow themselves to be trafficked while others become agents of trafficking. Some are forced to become sales girls and prostitutes, servicing their boss and outsiders sexually to meet up with city bills. Some come back to take their friends in the village and introduce them to immoral and obnoxious businesses.

Poor or lack of family planning is another factor advanced by scholars on the cause of human trafficking. The size of the family and the number of children in it who require care and attention place a special demand on the family which if it becomes unbearable, may lead to human trafficking to ease the burden. Such increases the level of stress experienced in the family. Some are polygamous families who manufacture large numbers of children which they cannot cater for. Having unwanted baby can aggravate the situation. Some girls get unwanted pregnancy, adding such bastard child to the already stressed up family, thereby generating more problems. The result of all these can be the survival of the fittest, leading to mass poverty, and sending the children to presumed helpers who are actually into traffick in persons. Such distressed families are sure havens for human traffickers. Eze (2008) is of the view that weakness of our law is contributory to human trafficking. Lack of stringent punishment met on the culprits encourages traffickers.

Oha (2012) for instance, agrees that hawking and child trafficking leads to loss of lives by accident, exposure to violence and crime, increase in prostitution and sexual transmitted diseases and increase in school dropouts. Akindeju (cited by Chiegboka 2002) lamented thus:

Traffickers are treating our humanity like an exchangeable ‘cargo’ and their profiteering pimps to satisfy grotesque monetary desires. Can you imagine anyone still in slave trade at this age and time? What happened to the fundamental human rights? We would want to ask how the traffickers could be so callous? One wonders if they also have human blood flowing in them. Apparently, they make a fortune from this very despicable act. (p. 15).

Ponle (2004) observes that trafficked children have been known to develop, among others, impaired knowledge, poor identity, ego problems, loss of self-esteem, emotional insecurity and could be juvenile delinquent. Apart from presenting a bad image which the country is battling to redeem, the menace has contributed to increased diseases and early deaths, arising from poor health, sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and AIDS. It has thus diminished human and national development. Guest (2003) opines that traffickers are splitting families and undermining confidence in the rule of law. They are even starting to recruit in schools. Alarmingly, the rot is beginning to spread into all the States of Nigeria.

Thousands of Nigerian prostitutes have been rounded up and deported back to Nigeria with barely a day’s notice. The deportation policy play hands of the pimps and traffickers, who often denounce veteran prostitutes to the police when they are close to paying off their debt with the aim of securing new and younger victims. The deportation does not address the abuse that is flourishing on Italy’s streets. The real folly of deportation is that it adds to the stress of the woman. Many of whom are infected with the HIV-AIDS virus and this make their reintegration much harder. This in turn adds to the burden on the financially stripped Nigerian authorities.

Some employers denounce trafficked women to immigration officials as illegal aliens. The result is always deportation for the victims, often under inhuman conditions. The victims are compelled to do things that deprive them their sense of dignity and self-respect. In some North African countries, there are Nigerians who have remained stranded for years owing to lack of means to get to their destination. Many have lost their lives. Benson (2012) observes that most of the children trafficked are below 10 years but the strain, pain and sadness in their eyes is pitiable. At such a tender age where innocence should reign supreme, where motherly love, care and attention should surround them everywhere, they have seen it all-abuse, torture, starvation, hard labour and deep hunger pangs. They are there to be used and abused and at the complete mercy of their captors, sometimes a restaurant owner, who decides their fate whichever the wind blows. Some are sold into homes where they double up as cook, steward, washer woman, gardener and sex slave. The only life they have ever is waking up in the morning to the drudgery of the day and satisfying their master at night time when they are not in the mood for the many prostitutes that come with them night after night. At barely five, some have been kidnapped on their way to the school or errand for their parents (mostly from African countries) and sold to slavery. That begins their tale of sorrow and tears. The CNN freedom project periodically showcases under aged persons made to work in farms and factories against their will and with their parents having no idea where they are. For Benson (2012), Human trafficking is a deadly menace, killing its victims slowly by the day, destroying their sense of self-worth and dignity, reducing them to even lesser than animals, where their collective destinies is shaped after the whims of some dirty food seller in a market or a brothel operator somewhere on the street or some other red light districts scattered all over the world. Describing the plight of trafficked victims, Mesce (2006) asserts that trafficking victims find themselves trapped. When they arrive at their destinations they are often confined, their travel documents seized and they cannot speak the local language.

Many are held in debt bondage, forced to work as prostitutes for little or no money until they can repay their traffickers amounts so grossly inflated that their bondage become

never-ending. Victims often are intimidated into submission, they may be gang-raped, beaten, drugged, starved and imprisoned. Those forced into prostitution report having to service 10 – 25 clients every night, and sometimes more. They are always at the high risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections. Those who become pregnant may be forced to have abortions, which often are performed by untrained providers in unhygienic conditions. These unsafe abortions can result in chronic reproductive health problems or even death. Some women are forced to take contraceptives, pills or injections or be sterilized. Fears of contracting HIV/AIDS has led traffickers to target younger girls and women sometimes 10 or even younger because they are perceived to be less likely to be infected with virus. The vaginal and anal tissues of these younger victims are easily torn, putting them at increased risk of contracting HIV. Traffickers are always ruthless and extremely violent in the treatment of their human cargo (trafficked persons). In some cases, the trafficked victims are subjected to go through voodoo rituals compliance and debt bondage in form of economic exploitation.

Olayinka (2007) is of the view that while some parts of the world are benefitting from the ignoble trade, Africa and in fact Nigeria is being deprived of its resources and a drain in its development. Ebigbo (in Nejuvie 2008) summarizes the negative effects of human trafficking as loss of lives, increasing prevalence of STDs, increase in violence and crime rate, increased school dropouts, impaired child development, poor national image and massive deportation of Nigerians.

The youths and children who engage in hawking are exposed to dangerous environmental situations. The way and manners the hawkers pursue fast moving vehicles expose them to accidents. Some of them in order to sell their products and meet up with the target of ‘Oga’ or

‘Madam’ collide with oncoming vehicles and sustain serious life-threatening injuries or even loose their lives. Thousands of Africans especially Nigerians have lost their lives via the Mediterranean Sea in the process of migrating to Europe through Libya. There are many sea