Al-Husseina Amadou was just one of thousands of girls in west Africa who are still bought cheaply as a wahaya, or ‘fifth wife’
l-Husseina Amadou never forgets the day she was sold. Like her parents, she was born into slavery in southern Niger. Forty-five years ago, when she was 15, a wealthy businessman from across the border in“My parents had no say,” she recalls. “I was just a girl and he bought me like a chicken in the market. When I left with him, I was crying with my mother.”
It’s sex trafficking. In Islam, prostitution and sex outside marriage are sins … it’s legitimate from a traditional and religious-legal perspectiveEventually Amadou escaped by joining a caravan of camel herders that took her across the border back into Niger in a gruelling journey that took seven days on foot. There she was found by activists from Timidria, a local charity that campaigns against slavery.Slavery has a complex legacy in Niger.
. Most are descendants of people who were enslaved generations ago, living and working on the land of their ancestral “masters”, similar to serfs in Tsarist Russia.is one of the most prevalent forms of bondage in Niger. It is a system through which wealthy men and traditional leaders buy girls for sex and domestic work for as little as £200.is mainly practised in a southern region near the Nigerian border Timidria refers to as the “triangle of shame”.
These efforts have met stiff resistance. The organisation has been accused of fraud and terrorism, and several of its staff have spent time behind bars. She adds: “When I was with him, he beat me often. The neighbours asked him to stop but he refused. He said he owned me and could do whatever he wanted to do.”