When The British State Battled With Nigerian Witchdoctors

The strange story of how UK law enforcement started countering trafficking gang juju rituals

Britain’s anti-slavery commissioner is examining radical new plans to prosecute sex traffickers by “reversing” the juju spells that terrorise many of their victims into staying silent… Kevin Hyland, the Government’s first anti-slavery commissioner, will travel to Africa next month to meet campaigners who have secured criminal convictions after reversing juju spells and persuading witnesses to give evidence.

- The Independent, 15th Feb 2015

The above quote might sound surprising to you. The British government has been working on plans to prosecute human traffickers by reversing magical spells which help keep trafficked victims silent. The spells, the juju oaths, are imposed on young women, often from Nigeria, and terrify them into never testifying against their captors once they are smuggled into Europe. Engagement with witch doctors, magic, secret rituals and even the spiritual power of kings is now part of British and European law enforcement. Let’s have a look at how that came about.

Juju oaths and black magic

Juju is not an easy concept to translate or define. It belongs to a class of oral folk religion found in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Cameroon. In general it involves believing that the spirit world can enter and manipulate the world of the living through magical objects such as amulets, skulls, shrines and so on, as well as through the invocation of spells, oaths and blood sacrifices. Oaths taken at juju houses or shrines are very powerful and have a place within the Nigerian legal system, although there is a long standing conflict between the law and traditional forms of community cohesion. One famous incident, the Okija Shrine Saga in 2004, revealed the scale of the problem when police raided the location:

A series of police raids at the shrines led to the discovery of scores of carefully labelled corpses in various stages of decomposition. The labels carried the names of the deceased. Parts of some of the corpses were missing. The priests claimed they were not doing anything illegal. Indeed, the shrines are run by a legally registered cultural body. Several eminent Igbo personalities openly supported them. Others opposing their activities alleged that the priests used various intimidation to force persons complained against to present themselves at the shrines and that, when a wealthy person took an oath at the shrine, the priests used all sorts of devious means to ensure his death so that they could commandeer his wealth. Another allegation was that the priests sold human parts to persons who required them for ritual purposes. It subsequently became clear that shrines like these are scattered all over Igboland in the eastern part of the country

-Juju Oaths in Customary Law Arbitration and Their Legal Validity in Nigerian Courts (2008) Abdulmumini A Oba

Oath taking typically involves swearing to a commitment in the name of a god, making a promise, which, if broken, would result in terrible consequences for that person and their loved ones. In the confusing flux of contemporary West Africa there is no static or fixed dogma through which to understand the place of magic. The traditional religions of voodoo or Vodun, Yoruba, Edo and Igbo spiritualities, beliefs from the old kingdom of Benin readily mix with rural village protector spirits and the manipulative or evil black magic of witches and sorcerers. For the young, the less educated and more vulnerable, it is difficult to assess where genuine belief ends and manipulative or predatory activity begins. The use of magical affectations and trappings are also present in gang violence and initiations, criminal activity such as cyber-crime and digital fraud, electoral politics and inter-ethnic disputes. The mid-2000’s phenomenon of yahoo yahoo, or the use of the internet for fraud and scamming often veered into magical territory:

a new set of cyber criminals emerged with yahoo plus. Their focus is to fast track victimisation rates through spiritual help. The new phenomenon synthesises spirituality (use of charms or juju) with surfing the Internet. It may not be unconnected with the Yoruba proverb: ojuboro o se fi gbomo lowo ekuro (a casual strategy cannot be successfully used to extract the nut out of a kernel).

-A spiritual dimension to cybercrime in Nigeria: the Yahoo plus phenomenon (2013) Oludayo Tade

Aside from the online world, the combination of crime and magic is potent, and Nigerian law enforcement have to deal with the deployment of witch doctors, curses, oaths, protective amulets, black magical violence and many other creative repurposed uses of juju. Even if you don’t believe there is any substance to these rituals and objects, the criminals and victims do, and their belief in the power of juju is what drives their behaviour.

Sex trafficking: from Nigeria to Italy and beyond

The definition of human trafficking as laid out by the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, or TIP protocol for short, is as follows:

"Trafficking in persons" shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs... The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth [above] shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth [above] have been used.

The aim of the protocol, which has held up for over 20 years now, is to place victims of trafficking into a special category whereby they will not be punished for their legal transgressions, such as illegal entry to a country or working without a visa. Trafficking covers a huge range of activities such as slavery, debt bondage, forced or coerced prostitution, forced marriages, child labour and many more. Flows of people from the global south to Europe and the United States has been ongoing in high numbers since the 1990’s, when border control liberalisation led to the start of mass migration. Nigerian women stand out in the statistics as one of the most overrepresented groups identified across Europe.

Identified human trafficking victims in European destination countries for 2015- 2016

In 2015-2016 214 victims of human trafficking were identified in Denmark, of these 134 were Nigerian women, similarly in Norway there were 262 victims, of which 125 were Nigerian women. On and on this goes, highlighting the unequal distribution of people and control over trafficking flows that exist across western and northern Africa. Italy and Spain, as entry countries, see very high numbers of Nigerian trafficking victims. In 2019 72% of all victims in Italy were from Nigeria.

Even here there are disparities. Nigerian women account for a huge share of the victims, but within this group the majority come from just one province - Edo state, in southern Nigeria.

Trafficking route from Edo to Italy, from Adeyinka et al 2023

Since the NATO military intervention in Libya, human trafficking has exploded. Official and unofficial detention facilities, camps, slave markets and prostitution rings abounded, especially during the worst excesses of the civil war.

Known locations of detainment and captivity in Libya. From Al-Dayel et al 2023

From within old schools, factories, warehouses, half-destroyed apartment complexes and even shipping containers, young Nigerian women were processed, moved, sold, purchased and sent on their way to Italy. From there the women would typically be under the control of a ‘madam’, who would ensure they stay confined and worked selling sex to local men or other migrants. Obviously the majority of these women did not want this outcome, and a whole range of reasons exist to explain how they end up in the hands of traffickers. Some are tricked or sold a lie about life in Europe, others are coerced, forced by family members or feel they have no other option due to poverty or lack of marriage and educational opportunities. What they often all have in common though is a visit to a juju shrine before they leave.

Taking the oath

One reason why Nigerian trafficking has been so lucrative and become so well established is that each women who passes through the network is absolutely terrified that something bad will happen to them or their loved ones if they disobey. Internalising the enforcement is a very useful way of keeping control with a minimum amount of effort. The way this is done is by forcing the women to take an oath at a juju shrine before a witchdoctor, an oath that compels them to: repay their trafficking debts, obey their madams and owners and to keep silent even if brought in front of the police or law enforcement.

Making such an oath requires the involuntarily taking of blood, hair or clothing from the women, and for them to consume some kind of potent ingredient - part ritualistic and part theatricality, to heighten the feeling that a solemn and unbreakable pact has been made. Some women report being buried alive in a coffin for a period of time. I’ll quote some testimonies from different trafficked women:

I was afraid when I saw that he had brought me to a shrine. They forced me to bath with water that the juju man put there, and he forced to lick one very peppery and bitter thing. I spit it out, but the juju man was very angry he and warned me not to spit it out again and made me to lick it. Then I had to kneel at the shrine and swear that if I ever refuse to pay the money, they say I owe for the trip to Europe, I would run mad, and that bad things would happen to me and to anyone that tries to help me not to pay back or escape. Then they put a chicken around my head three times and removed the heart for me to eat. (Minor, M1)

So, we went to the shrine to swear and she [the madam] was there. I also had to swallow something very bitter, aunty, I don’t even know what I swallowed. I don’t know what I ate, whether it was human meat or fowl, I don’t know. (Minor, M1)

The woman said that we had to swear that we would pay her back, because she had helped more than one girl who ended up running away with her money, so she needed the insurance. We went to a shrine and the native doctor [a woman] tying a white wrapper made some marks on me with a razor and made me swear that I would pay back, or else horrible things would happen to me. I also had to drink some kind of dirty water. (Adult, M1)

We went to a beach and sat on the floor, I was scared and shaking. The man then told us not to cry, that anyone who cries in that place will die within 24 hours. She [the trafficker] then brought out the paper with my pubic hair and with that of the other girls, she had now written our names on each one. She gave it to the man [juju ritualist] and told him: ‘‘these are the girls,’’ and she wants him to make sure that we pay. So, the man told us to come with him one by one. (Minor, M1)

The Role of Juju Rituals in Human Trafficking of Nigerians: A Tool of Enslavement, But Also Escape (2023) Adeyinka et al

The oaths are taken before various gods, who will punish them for any transgression. The punishments could include - going insane and wondering the streets of Europe, infertility, death of a parent or family member, death during childbirth or the death of the oath breaker herself. At this point the woman or girl will also have entered into a contract to repay the trafficker a significant sum of money (between 20-50,000 Euros). The women don’t usually understand how much this is until they arrive in Europe, where their dream of becoming a babysitter or hairdresser ends with them selling sex on the streets of Amsterdam or working as a slave in the house of a rich Nigerian expat.

Keeping silent

This entire system would be unknown to the vast majority of westerners if not for the encounters between the police or immigration services and these unfortunate women. In 2013 the Institute of Public Policy Research in the United Kingdom published a report about Nigerian trafficking into Britain, entitled Beyond Borders . This and similar investigations outlined to the immigration authorities the nature of the juju oath problem and the difficulty of working with or rescuing women and children who had been subjected to it.

Such is the level of fear that the oath instils, victims believe any breach will result in the spirits inflicting horrific and violent acts upon them or their family (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking UK [ECPAT UK], 2009, p. 1; Jones, 2011; Kara, 2011). When discovered in the U.K. and Europe by police and care agencies, victims have refused to talk and try by any means possible to return to their trafficker (Boff, 2013; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2010). In 2010 the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) published its Strategic Threat Assessment on Child Trafficking in the U.K. It reported that between 2009 and 2010, 18% of trafficked children went missing from local authority care; many within the first 48 h (Child Exploitation Online Protection [CEOP], 2010). A similar report by the Children’s Society (2012) identified that Nigerian children ran away as they were still under the control of their trafficker, and feared the consequences of breaching their oath. The oath therefore alleviates the need for chains or locked rooms, as the fear of spiritual retribution psychologically binds the victim to the trafficker.

-Exploring the use of juju in Nigerian human trafficking networks: considerations for criminal investigators (2018) A.Dunkerley

The difficulties of extracting information from any victims in custody has been explored in multiple reports, and they stress the need to take their terror in the oath seriously, and to build trust over long periods of time. Fear of police corruption, anxiety about their trafficker, the juju oath, fear of reprisals to their family and the stress of sexual assaults, rapes and beatings combine to make interviews almost impossible.

One response by the UK and other governments has been to try and work within the victim’s religious framework and make use of their dual Christian and traditional beliefs. Through spiritual counselling some girls were convinced that the Christian god is more powerful than any juju curse and they felt able to speak. Others use a ‘drip-drip’ method where they test the spirits by leaking tiny amounts of information and then waiting to see if any consequences occur. Psychosomatic illnesses and mental panics can occur by doing this, as the victim interprets any negativity in their life as the juju oath being fulfilled.

The most radical initiative came from the world’s first ‘anti-slavery commissioner’ a man called Kevin Hyland, who was appointed in 2015 in the wake of the Modern Slavery Act. Hyland pushed to tackle slavery and human trafficking across a number of dimensions, including actively working with the Nigerian government to see if they could force the juju shrine priests and witchdoctors to ‘reverse’ the oaths taken by individual girls.

Kevin Hyland, the Government’s first anti-slavery commissioner, will travel to Africa next month to meet campaigners who have secured criminal convictions after reversing juju spells and persuading witnesses to give evidence.

Officials have tracked down the witchdoctor and ordered him to reverse the curse or face prosecution as an accomplice to the child trafficking ring. Once the spell is reversed, witnesses are willing to give evidence. The process has been used at least four times in Nigeria, according to that country’s main anti-trafficking organisation.

-The Independent, 15/02/2015

Not much information is available about this ‘reverse-juju’ initiative, except that cooperation between Nigeria and Britain, along with some other European countries, had been marginally successful in a handful of cases. In essence the UK taxpayer was funding a policy of spell-breaking, going so far as to reach into the heartlands of the Edo State and demand that individual witchdoctors undo their juju curses.

The King steps in

Edo State is part of modern Nigeria, but it has also retained many features of its older kingdom. One of these is the position of the traditional king or ruler, the Oba of Benin. The Oba is a social, political and spiritual leader to his people. Where forcing one witchdoctor to recant an oath is good for one or two people, using the power of a king to override all such oaths is good for everyone. In 2018, Oba Ewuare II was acutely aware of the trafficking situation, having served as ambassador for Nigeria in Italy. He had worked with numerous multi-agency organisations, helping to tackle the issue, and decided upon his kingship that he could take an extraordinary step.

On March 9, 2018, the Oba stood outside his palace with his retinue of priests, witchdoctors and chiefs and made the following pronouncement:

You native doctors whose business is to subject people to the oath of secrecies and encouraging this evil act on the land, you have to repent, stop doing it. This is not a joking matter and if you do not repent, you have to wait for the repercussion. The palace is not against those practicing the act of native doctors but those who use it to perpetrate evil in the land through aiding and abetting human trafficking in the state. We want to use this medium to tell those who are under any oaths of secrecies that they are now free. We revoke the oath today. I want to use this medium to tell you that the act of using charms to aid trafficking, the palace seriously frowns at it. We want us to join hands together to fight against human trafficking in the land.

The effect was immediate. Priests and madams, witchdoctors and gangsters stopped using the juju oaths. Women in Europe heard the news from their families, their friends, other women around them. His words were printed onto posters for all to see. The Oba’s pronouncement liberated them from their oaths and they were free to leave and to talk to the police. Testimonies from both sides gathered over the next few years reveal the freedom gained and the fear instilled by the king’s words:

I asked for help from some of my girlfriends who ran away from their madam, they told me about what Oba said. So, I called her mum to ask if it was true and my mum said yes. So I asked another friend, and she said: ‘‘Yes, Oba told us not to pay and that she is a Bini girl [from Edo state] so she herself will not pay again.’’ So, I asked her to help me. (Adult, M1)

So, someone told me that there’s a Benin girl who told them that girls have stopped bringing in money because of the Oba’s curse. The person told me that I should run for my life and shouldn’t give my madam any money, even if she asks. I went and hid at a woman’s house. (Adult, M1)

After Oba swear, my madam called begging me not to curse her, that I shouldn’t return the rest of the money, because she was afraid of Oba’s swear and death. She begged me that she has a daughter, and I should please have mercy on her . Now the madam started calling again to ask for money.. I was very angry, so I went directly to the capo [shelter director] to tell her everything. Then the capo took me to the police to report the situation. The calls make me angry because she even has her own child at home, she is a mother, but she uses other people’s children. (Minor, M1)

I ended up going to court to testify against her [madam].. In court, I looked my madam in the eye, and I said: ‘‘You, you are the one who brought me here and forced me to do ashawo [prostitution] work’’ and she was found guilty and sentenced. I think she is under arrest now. (Adult, M1).

The Oba of Benin’s intervention was celebrated in Italy [Naomi Morello/Al Jazeera]

Aftermath

Much like the girls drip feeding information to British police, slowly but surely the Nigerian traffickers have overcome their fear of the Oba’s curse. Although Edo State is no longer the epicentre it once was, the problem of trafficking and preying on naive young women has not ended.

Overall external trafficking from Nigeria as a whole has decreased since 2018, no doubt in part due to better coordination with Nigerian police, but also to the Oba’s ability to frighten many juju priests into never accepting trafficked clients.

UNHCR statistics indicate that in 2018, the number of Nigerian arrivals by sea and land into Europe continued to decline (1,250 arrived in Italy- 5% of total arrivals). Since then, Nigerian arrivals have continued to decline. According to UNHCR statistics, Nigerians were not amongst the top 10 nationalities of arrivals by land or sea into Greece, Spain or Italy (the three primary countries for arrivals) in 2019 or in 2020. (In fact, in Italy, Nigerians represented a meagre 2.1% of the total 11,000 land and sea arrivals in 2019 and numbers have continued to drop since 2017.) The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) further reports that as of April 2022, there were approximately 649,788 migrants in Libya, of which Nigerians represented approximately 5% (32,000). According to UNHCR, it currently has (as of August 2022) 43,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers in Libya. Again, Nigerians are not within the top 9 nationalities registered with UNHCR in Libya, the country which many experts have considered the unsafe migration gateway into Europe (particularly from Sub-Saharan Africa) in recent years.

-Nigeria: Human Trafficking Factsheet (2022) Pathfinders Justice Initiative

The use of juju trafficking continues, amongst a myriad of other cultural-religious issues that the police have to deal with in regards to cross-border crime. Exactly how effective the counter-spell protocols used by the UK and others were is hard to assess, only a few cases of this type have been successfully prosecuted. Who knows what other magical rites European governments will have to deal with in the coming decades.