Wife of the chairman of the Bayelsa Traditional Rulers Council and first military administrator of old Rivers State, King Alfred Diette-Spiff, has relieved her experience on how she was drafted to be trafficked to Europe for sex slavery, but later escaped.
According to her, despite the pressure, threat and deceit adopted by human traffickers and their agents, she rejected their offer and resorted to menial jobs at dumpsites in Benin City, Edo State, to survive and escape the tempting promises of the traffickers.
Queen Josephine, the Chairperson of the state’s Traditional Rulers Wives Association and the Niger Delta Royal Queen Forum, while speaking during a visit by the members of the Young Moms Support Foundation, an organization campaigning against teenage pregnancy and child molestation, said she turned down a proposal from close friends to travel to Italy to engage in prostitution.
“I had to carry blocks, cement and sand in a dumpsite to train myself in school. There is no justification for any girlchild to go into drugs or travel to Europe for prostitution, when they have the opportunity to be educated and achieve greatness through self determination,” she stated.
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Explaining further, she said: “I am interested in this programme because it is a reflection of me. I grew up in Benin city, where prostitution was very rampant in my days and I was almost drafted to be one of them but I said no.
“As a woman, you can do anything that will get you to where you want to be without prostitution, drug abuse or traveling abroad to get molested and treated as a lesser human. I have lots of friends then who went abroad, Italy to be precise. Today, they beg me for stipends.
“If people will learn how to read, they would be more advanced and would be able to survive because life itself is full of trouble. So, there is no way you are going to escape it.
“That is why I am interested in the girl child to let them know I wasn’t waiting for the boy, I wasn’t waiting for government to give me money. I worked it out by myself.
“Today, I am proud to know that I am a woman who God used to be who I am today because I gave God the opportunity.
“As a young woman even if you have made a mistake, don’t let your mistake stop you. Don’t let the circumstances you find yourself determine your future. Create one for yourself.”
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