Amazing World Of Female Smugglers
The News 2007/4/30
By Paul Adeagbo

Women are as active as men in the dangerous business of smuggling. The weaker sex? Not these ones

Even at 4.30 a.m., the Mile Two terminus on Badagry expressway in Lagos is usually a drone of voices. The voices are mostly those of smugglers and their cab driving accomplices. This writer, on an official assignment on the Badagry-Seme smuggling route, observed Chimobi Nnamaka, 32, dash off to look for a vehicle that would ferry her goods to another terminus where she would board a vehicle to Warri. Nnamaka had arrived at the Mile 2 terminal only about two and half hours earlier from Togo and had just woken up from sleep. Curious that a husband would leave this paragon of beauty to risk the hazards of smuggling, this writer enquired from her why she ventured into smuggling. The response: “My husband attempted to discourage me, but I would not yield. I know how much I make from each trip. My husband was retrenched from an oil servicing company and we have three children to cater for. What am I supposed to do?”smuggles into Nigeria.

Introduced to smuggling eight years ago by a friend, Nnamaka ventured into it with N7500. Initially, she would pair with her friend to buy goods at the Seme border, which she smuggled into Lagos and finally to Warri to sell. Over the years, the Imo State indigene has become successful in the trade. In Warri, she confides in the reporter, she boasts of a shop stocked with goods worth over N5 million.

Nnamaka has been riding the turbulent waves that accompany the business. To her, the risks encountered in the course of a smuggling trip simply pass for an interesting adventure. She recalls one night she was stranded at the Seme border how a Customs officer attempted to rape her at the corner of the arrival lounge where she had holed up for the night. To avert the violation, she had to pay the officer a huge ransom. About five times, she had had a close shave with death when armed robbers attacked the bus she was travelling in. On a number of occasions, her wares had been seized. Despite it all, she remains adamant smuggling is the only business that could fetch the money she needs. Though she has a National Diploma in Marketing, she vows seeking a salaried job with the certificate is out of the question. She would rather market the shoes, bags and other wares that she smuggles into Nigeria.

Nnamaka is just one of the scores of female smugglers that traverse the numerous smuggling routes between Nigeria and the neighbouring countries of Togo, Benin, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. Every night, at the Mile 2 terminus, there are no fewer than 300 of the female specie either preparing to depart for the borders or arriving from smuggling runs. Those waiting for dawn to depart lie on bags of rice or benches belonging to night food vendors or mai tea, sit on cartons of tin tomato paste, or are stretched out on their wrappers on the floor. The late arrivals from the routes are busy sorting out goods brought in in all sorts of disguise to beat customs check and seizure.

There seems no age limit or class to the smuggling female membership. Bosede, 19, a student of Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Ijanikin, Lagos State, brings in goods from across the border to sell in Lagos to make a living and pay her school fees. She insists that selling jeans and ladies wears has been a veritable means of meeting her financial needs. An unfortunate product of a broken home, Bosede’s parents have re-married and none of them appears to have interest in her welfare. Smuggling has provided an escape out of poverty and, it is, she maintains, better than prostitution.

The smugglers have to contend with the social stigma that attends their trade. Most female smugglers, it is generally believed, trade away their chastity, especially to the rampaging Customs officers on the prowl, to succeed. Last month, in a commercial bus conveying mostly female smugglers to Seme, trouble started when the ring refused to reimburse the bus conductor who had paid the toll demanded by Customs officers at a checkpoint. The driver’s mate maintained that he had only charged the women as mere passengers and did not add the cost of ferrying across their contraband. One of the women, declaring no kobo would be added to the fare, burst out that but for financial problems, no decent woman would be involved in what she described as “the dirty business of smuggling,” as they (the women) throw all caution to the wind to achieve their goals.