A survivor of human trafficking, Oyinlola Solanke, has warned Nigerian ladies against travelling to Oman for jobs 25-year-old.

Solanke says the menial jobs ladies are subjected to in Oman are different from the pictures the traffickers must have painted for them, Solanke says she worked as a maid in Oman and escaped sexual abuse from her boss who kept disturbing her for sex.

According to her, she was able to make it back to Nigeria after faking the death of her father A 25-year old lady survivor of human trafficking, Oyinlola Solanke, has warned Nigerian ladies against travelling to Oman for jobs. Solanke, who gave the advice in Allure Vanguard of Monday, September 30, narrated her ordeal as a victim of human trafficking in Oman.

According to Solanke, she travelled to Oman through the help of her baby father’s cousin, who she would later found had been dishonest with her while the visa processing was ongoing. At first, her baby father’s cousin had told her that she (Solanke) would be travelling to Dubai, but later opened up to her that her destination was Oman. Solanke said: “Oman is a different country even though it is not far from Dubai. I had to borrow money again to do another police report to correct it to Oman.

They sent me my ticket by the time the visa was out, that was when I found out that I was going to be working as a maid for a family. “I was a bit reluctant. When I went to tell the cousin to the father of my kids, she was angry with me. She said that she has heard so much about me that I am a proud person. That I don’t have a job and I am being picky. That was when I decided to change my mind.

“I wanted to still be with the father of my kids and I didn’t want to have problems with the family. So I agreed and traveled. “I had a few hitches in Kenya airport which delayed me. when I got to Oman, I got to understand that the lady that sent me there asked the family for money for me to renew my passport which she never gave me and she was demanding I pay her all she spent for the visa including that of the passport renewal.” She said that the family she was to work for insisted that they would collect her passport. Solanke said: “I told them I paid for my passport myself, that was when they told me that they paid for that too through the woman and she never told me. At first when I got to the family I was to work for, I was ok. They were nice. But the labour was just too much. “I felt that as a maid, it is normal to go through labour abuse; I mean you are there to serve them. I wake up 5am and work, work that most times I forget to eat. I sleep like past midnight or 1am and I am still going to wake up at 5am again.”

The mother of two who hold a diploma in Local Government Studies from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), said she made up her mind to travel back to Nigeria when her boss started disturbing her for sex. She said: “He would come to my room every night trying to have sex with me. I always battle with him, it becomes a fight. The only thing that helped me was that his wife was a full time house wife. It is only the little times she goes out to go get groceries or to greet her family that he would come and meet me.

“If the wife was a working class, I am very sure he would have succeeded. There was a time he hit me and my face was swollen. The wife asked me, I had to lie that I hit my face with fear that if I tell her, it would have been my words against his.”

On how she was able to get back to Nigeria, she said: “I sent a message to Efe Smith, a guitarist and told him to send a message to me the following day at 7pm to tell me that my dad is gone. “I told him to act like he is my brother. I started telling all my friends to start pretending that I had lost my dad. The day I got the message, I pretended and started crying. I told them to give me my passport that I have to go to Nigeria. I said that I need to send my data page for my family to pay for my ticket back home.”

Solanke shed more light about her job in Oman: “It is a contract and they will tell you that they have paid for your life and you cannot go until two years. At that time, I had stayed over six months. I already know that if you stay six months, you have paid off whatever money they spent on you. “Before I left Nigeria, they told me that my salary would be 150,000 but when I got to Oman, what they paid me was 70 Omani rial. In naira, it’s not up to N70,000 monthly. I went through a lot. At the time I was faking the death of my dad, I could not eat or sleep. I lived in fear.”

Source:Legit

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