Nigerian woman jailed 15 years for human trafficking, ordered to compensate victims with GHC10,000 each

A Nigerian hairdresser who trafficked seven victims from Nigeria to Ghana to engage in prostitution has been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.

Appearing before a Sogakope Circuit Court Promise Obianu Awayiaka, 32, pleaded guilty to seven counts of human trafficking and she was convicted on her plea. 

Promise was also ordered by the court presided over by Isaac Addo to pay GHC10,000 to each of the victims as compensation.

It said, “looking at the seriousness of the offence committed, the number of victims involved, it ought to hand down a deterrent sentence to traffickers and “would be Traffickers. This gruesome act is clearly a modern (form of) slavery, which must not be countenanced.”

The court directed the Ghana Immigration Service to ensure that all the victims were taken through counselling and sent back to Nigeria.

Prosecuting Assistant Superintendent of Immigration Yussif Misbawu, who held the brief of Superintendent of Immigration Bernard John Otoo, said Promise, now a Convict, resided at Mafi-Kuamse, a suburb of Sogakope in the Volta Region.

Prosecution said Promise recruited and transported seven girls from Nigeria to Ghana with pretext of securing them employment as sales girls in a supermarket in Kasoa in the Central Region of Ghana but forced them into prostitution.

It said the girls (victims) arrived in two groups; the first group was made up of four women aged between 22 to 25 years.

At Mafi-Kumase, Promise recruited and transported three more victims (girls) from Nigeria aged 17, 20, and 23 and she forced them into prostitution.

It said the Ghana Immigration Service was informed, leading to the arrest of Promise and the arrest of victims.