It has been gathered that about 20,000 Nigerian victims of sex trade are trapped in Mali as the government is struggling to bring them back home. Officials say collusion between law enforcement agents and traffickers is hampering the rescue efforts.

A video posted online revealed that thousands of the victims were kept in chattered shacks located at the outskirt of Kokoyo in western Mali.

Many girls said the human traffickers had promised them good lives with well paid jobs in Europe but found themselves trapped in Mali for sex trade.

Ranging from fourteen years old upward, the girls said they were forced to sleep with ten men per day. Some of them as young as 14 years were practically yanked off the street of Nigeria in their school uniforms, according to Aljazeerah.

A sixteen-year-old teenage mother, also a victim, related that she came to Mali through the Benin Republic. She had been promised by her trafficker a good househelp job in the Europe where she would make a lot from her trafficker but that was reversed immediately she stepped out of Nigeria, as the trafficker turned her to a sex slave. The 16-year-old girl now has a baby.

The traffickers in Kokoyo town of Mali made it clear that Nigerians trying to rescue their citizens trapped in the sex trade are “unwelcome”.