Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective

I landed in Nigeria before dawn on January 2, 2010. Christmas carols played over the speaker system as I waited in the immigration queue at Lagos Murtala Mohammed International Airport. The tranquility of the music and the calm before first light belied the extremes of violence, hardship, and disarray I was about to encounter. It took years of planning before I felt I could travel to Nigeria and conduct research effectively and safely. I needed local fixers and trusted relationships deep in the field; I also needed considerable resources. Despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, Nigeria is one of the most expensive in which to conduct human rights research. The primary culprit is security costs. The moment one steps outside the airport, security is a pressing concern. The price of keeping safe within Lagos is steep enough, but once I left the capital for rural areas, those costs skyrocketed, as did the challenges of getting around and finding enough food to eat.

Church in Nigeria is unlike church anywhere else, and going to a Sunday service at the TREM Redeemed Evangelical Mission in Lagos was the first step toward understanding the power of spirituality to the people of Nigeria, a power that is central to the trafficking of women, girls, and boys from the country. The open-air church was draped in red and green streamers for the Christmas season. The ceremony was officiated by Bishop Mike Okonkwo, who wore a flowing blue and gold kaftan. Bishop Okonkwo officiated his service to more than four thousand people. He preached at the top of his lungs to a rapt congregation that cheered more loudly and more feverishly with each passing hour. By hour four, the energy of the gathering was electric. Bishop Okonkwo mesmerized the audience with an impassioned praise of God. His oratory was enthralling. As his sermon reached its apex, he suddenly fell to the ground and spoke in tongues. As if in mass hypnosis, the entire congregation fell to the ground as well, and everyone spoke in tongues. I cannot describe the cyclonic sensation of observing thousands of people in mass rapture, crying phrases that seemed to have no meaning. The congregation was in ecstasy. It was one of many experiences I had in Nigeria that defied comprehension. I watched intently as men, women, and children rolled on the ground with eyes transfixed on another dimension. I worried that my incongruous presence might somehow corrupt their experience, but I realized I was a nonfactor in the euphoria of the moment. It was a fathomless scene, both beautiful and alarming, a communion wreathed in wails of exaltation. At length, Bishop Okonkwo returned to himself and brought the congregation back with him. There was a mass release, followed by a calm that passed my understanding. The sermon concluded with praise for children, who are the innocent future of the nation.

Dr. Okonkwo gave me a gracious tour of the shelter, which housed twenty-nine survivors at the time I visited, ages eleven to nineteen. The shelter personnel were going to great lengths to heal these survivors from the brutalities they had endured. This was one of the largest and most respected survivor shelters in Nigeria, operating in conjunction with the International Organisation on Migration (IOM) and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), a Nigerian government agency formed in 2003 with the mandate of combating human trafficking in the country. All but three of the victims had been trafficked abroad before being deported and sent back to Nigeria. Several had been deported more than once. A young girl named Hope told me she had been to Italy, Spain, and France and was passed from one madam to the next before she was arrested and deported. “The madams in Spain are the worst,” she said. “They beat us for fun every day.” Fifteen-year-old Osa said, “I wanted to go to Europe so I could send money to my mother. She was sick and could not work because my father beat her. I had to be with men like my father. It was very bad.”

The first sex trafficking victims from Nigeria I met were in Italy. I describe some of these encounters in Sex Trafficking.1 From Italy, my encounters spanned Europe, and eventually Thailand and the United States. All but two of the Nigerian sex trafficking victims I met were from Edo State, all were Yoruba and lived in terror of a juju priest who had taken control of their souls during a ceremony that almost none were willing to describe. These women and girls told impossible tales of traversing the desert by foot for weeks and months before taking a raft from north Africa to Spain, only to be deported and trafficked back again. They were tormented by their madams, brutalized by the men who purchased them, and refused to cooperate with local authorities for fear that the juju priest would curse them. This curse was no small matter—an evil spirit would possess anything that had been, or one day would be, born from their womb. If that were not enough, the juju priests typically worked in conjunction with the Nigerian mafia, which threatened the worst possible punishments to the victims and their families should the girls ever try to escape or fail to repay their debts. The juju ritual also serves the purpose of erasing the girl’s identity. She is told she must forget who she is and be reborn as someone else, someone under the control of the oath. The level of control exerted by the juju ritual was beyond anything I had encountered. Chains and locked doors were nothing compared to the hold this curse had on the women of Edo State. The curse clutched their souls and did not let go. Few of the Nigerians I met were willing to speak about the ritual. One young woman who did so was named Gift.

I met Gift in Copenhagen at a Red Cross shelter for sex trafficking victims. She was from the Eshan village in Edo State. The name of her village means “place she ran to,” based on an old story that the queen of the Benin Empire fled to this area centuries ago after a quarrel with the king. Today young girls cannot flee from Eshan village fast enough, and they search desperately for safety and income in faraway lands. Gift’s father died when she was six, leaving her mother and three siblings to fend for themselves. They worked as day laborers in farming for the local landowner, but the wages were paltry, and the family could barely survive. Tribes and armed militia from the north also began raiding villages in the south and absconding with young girls, placing Gift and her sisters in considerable jeopardy. In this context, Gift was desperate to travel to Europe. This is what she told me.

The ritual typically starts late at night in a juju priest’s shrine. It can last a few hours or go on for days. The priest takes some of the girl’s menstrual blood, nail clippings, and hair, and places these items in a container with her photo affixed to the outside, upside down. The priest and the girl drink alcohol and drugs to achieve an altered mental state. As they chant, the young woman must repeatedly take several oaths: she will obey her madam, never try to escape, never discuss the ritual, never cooperate with authorities abroad, and will keep working until she is told that her debt is discharged. The priest marks the girl’s body with cuts using a sharp stone or razor blade, then he smears the cuts with ash. The girl undertakes the ritual because she will not be transported abroad otherwise, and she also receives a blessing from the priest that her journeys will be safe and fruitful. A tray of sand and chicken bones is used for divination to predict the girl’s future, and a pact is made with the earth so she can be controlled or cursed by the priest whenever her feet touch the ground, no matter how far away she is. The priest also takes control of the girl’s womb, giving him the ability to curse any child that has been or ever will be born from it. The girl lives in terror of this curse and believes in its power completely. No amount of reasoning can persuade her that the curse is invalid.

The first step in my journey to Gift’s village was to travel from Lagos to Benin City, the capital of Edo State. Traveling in Nigeria proved to be more difficult than travel in any other country I have visited. First, the environment is utterly toxic. There is a perpetual brown murk in the air from the burning of crude oil and vehicle pollution. To make matters worse, I arrived in Edo State at the time of the Harmattan winds, which carry fine sand from the Sahara desert across the entire country. As bad as the air was in Lagos, it was much filthier in Edo State, and in Delta State it was worst of all. Near Port Harcourt, the air was intolerable and the ground was covered in a toxic oil slick. Plant life was sparse, and I did not see a single bird in the sky. Hills of rubbish were everywhere, with a dead body or two lying next to them now and then. Land travel in Nigeria, even with security and a trusted driver, is unequivocally discouraged due to the certainty of being abducted for ransom or being forced to pay numerous “dashes” (bribes) at police check points along the highway. I was advised never to use plastic currency in Nigeria, or my credit card details would be stolen within minutes. Corruption runs rampant in the country, and most people reading this book will have received numerous emails from a supposed Nigerian barrister promising an inheritance of millions of dollars if the recipient’s bank details are provided.2 These emails are known locally as “419 Letters,” referencing the portion of the Nigerian penal code that addresses fraud. The same scam artists prey on their countrymen as well, often selling another person’s home or land without the owner’s permission. As a result, hand-painted signs are often placed in front of homes across rural Nigeria that read: “This home and attached land are not for sale, by order of Jesus.”

In addition to being the capital of Edo State, Benin City is the capital of the historic Benin Empire.3 Unlike most of West Africa, Benin was not a slave-dealing empire, making it all the more disheartening that the region has become one of the primary sources of human trafficking from West Africa. The southern portion of Nigeria was dominated by the Benin Empire dating back to the fifteenth century, and it is said that the current Oba (king) of Benin can trace his line of royalty back to 1170. When the British arrived in Benin City in 1897 and discovered human sacrifice, they were so appalled that they burned down the king’s palace and took control of the empire. Their next task was to civilize the “heathens” through the introduction of Christianity. Traditionally, the people of Edo State are Yoruba and follow an all-powerful God named Olorun or Olodumare (“owner of the universe”), along with well over one thousand other deities and spirits. The Yoruba tradition was mixed with Christianity upon the arrival of the missionaries, and it evolved into a unique Christian-Yoruba mix still practiced today across much of southern Nigeria. However, unlike other parts of southern Nigeria, Edo State clung more tightly to traditional beliefs, which have seen a resurgence since the chaos that ensued in Nigeria after independence in 1960. In this context, several cults to ancient deities in the Yoruba tradition have emerged. The primary one, the Cult of Ayelala, is responsible for all juju oaths taken by Nigerian girls prior to their trafficking abroad. This cult dominates the spiritual lives of the Yoruba people, and it is also the primary source of law and order in the state. Most people have little faith in the Nigerian police and justice systems.

Ayelala is a fascinating deity and her origin story reveals why she governs the juju oaths. Long ago, there were said to be two main tribes in the Yoruba lands, the Ijaw and the Ilaje. An Ilaje man fell in love with an Ijaw woman, and even though he was already married, he ran away to the Ijaw to be with the woman. This created strife between the two tribes, so it was agreed that an Ijaw slave woman would be sacrificed to atone for the sins of the adulterous Ilaje man. As the slave woman was being sacrificed, she uttered the word “Ayelala,” which means “the world is incomprehensible,” and this became her name. Before she passed away, Ayelala made a solemn vow to witness all agreements made under her name, and should they be broken she can be invoked to curse the oath breaker. Ayelala was deified, and a cult grew around her and spread across Benin. She instills fear in all believers and is the ultimate dispenser of justice and the protector of truth and morality.⁴ Traveling to Gift’s village meant traveling into the heart of the land of Ayelala—the land over which GT had complete control.

Gift’s village was about 100 kilometers north of Benin City. Travel by car from the city to her village was unavoidable, even if highly inadvisable. I had several drivers throughout my time in Nigeria, most of whom were very cautious and professional. Finding a driver with a reliable car in rural Nigeria, however, was quite a challenge. A car breakdown deep in a rural area was not at all desirable. I did my best to find dependable drivers and cars through word of mouth, and although the results were mixed, the driver who took me to Gift’s village turned out to be particularly helpful.

His name was Step-by-Step and he spoke pidgin English, which does not relate in any systematic way to normal English. For example, “hoy far” means “hello,” “abeg” means “please,” “chop” means “food,” “how bodi” means “how are you,” “butta my bread,” means “God has answered my prayers,” “go slow” means “traffic jam,” and “so kin so” means “two-door vehicle,” such as the one driven by Step-by-Step. I tried to memorize a few useful phrases before traveling to Edo State, but communication was still difficult without a guide who could translate pidgin English to English, and such guides were simply not available.

After I spoke with Gift, she sent word through a few people in her village who had mobile phones that I would be arriving. Gift’s village consisted of a few dozen red clay houses with sheet-metal roofs. The clay was made by mixing the red dirt with water to form a bricklike substance that was sturdier than the mud huts in most of the villages I had visited in other rural settings. Gift’s mother was named Joy, and as our car pulled up to her hut, she ran out, threw her arms around me, and erupted in tears. Like Step-by-Step, she only spoke pidgin English, so I could not understand what she was saying, but I understood her tears, her embraces, and her ardent gestures toward her children. I knew she did not want them to follow in Gift’s footsteps, but I could see why she would not want them to stay in the village either. It was a place where people could barely survive. The only water came from rain, toilets were holes in the ground covered by a plank of wood, and there was no electricity. To make matters worse, kidnappings by militias heightened the risk of remaining. Though Boko Haram had not yet ventured this far south, it was rumored that they were coordinating with local sympathizers to abduct girls and take them north where they would be sold as sex slaves.

Joy apologized for having nothing to offer me to eat but boiled tree leaves. I told her she must not apologize; rather, I should apologize to her as all I had to offer her family were a dozen granola bars I brought for them. I handed out the granola bars, and the children tentatively ate them. Joy sat down on the ground next to me and started to cry. Mercy, whose English was relatively good, translated the conversation.“My mother says Gift is so far. We know she is in Europe, but we do not know where she is. She is so far.”

I could not believe the coincidence, if that’s what it was. Of all the drivers who could have taken me to Gift’s village, I ended up with the man who had driven her sister Mercy to GT for her juju oath. Maybe there are not many drivers in rural Edo State, or maybe it was just dumb luck, but as it turned out, Step-by-Step had driven dozens of girls to GT through the years. Not many people know the way to GT’s shrine, but Step-by-Step knew the way well. I asked Mercy to ask him if he would take me, and they both said it was not a good idea. Step-by-Step said that GT’s shrine was far away in a rural area and that GT would be very suspicious if we just showed up. I tried to persuade Step-by-Step that it was important for me to see GT and his shrine, because I wanted to understand him and the power he held over girls like Gift and Mercy. Eventually, Mercy persuaded him by agreeing to come along with us under the guise of saying that she needed more guidance from him before leaving for Europe. She would say that I was a friend of her sister’s who had come to visit and was interested in helping more members of the family migrate to Europe. It felt like a flimsy cover story that GT was not likely to believe, but it was the only way I was going to have a chance to meet the man who had terrorized Gift and countless other Nigerian sex trafficking victims around the world.

As we continued down the path, I felt conflicted about leaving Mercy behind and contemplated going back to her. I was also quite anxious that without her I could not understand Step-by-Step and that our cover story was no longer plausible. Why on earth was I randomly, and without Mercy, showing up to visit GT? I ran through possible scenarios in my mind but could not come up with a clear answer to the dilemma. This would probably be my only chance to meet GT, but I did not want to cause harm or risk to anyone other than myself. The risks of leaving Mercy on her own in the forest for an hour were difficult to assess, as were the risks of carrying on with the meeting with GT without her. Indeed, not carrying on with the meeting with GT might also raise suspicions on his part that could put Mercy and her family at risk. Overcome by the complexity of the situation, I pushed on.

At this point, the fear that Step-by-Step, Mercy, and thousands of girls from Edo State had felt became all too real to me. I am a rational person, but—here in the middle of West Africa amid customs and powers I did not understand—even I began to wonder what kind of world I was entering. What were the rules, and what kind of forces held power here? Step-by-Step gestured to me to wait where I was as he walked into the shrine. I stood alone outside, trying to take in as much as I could. I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a few photos of the shrine and the surroundings. The front wall of the shrine was covered in dozens of framed photographs. I moved closer and saw that each photo was of a deformed female, some with distended bellies, others with disfigured faces and limbs. These were the women GT had cursed for breaking their oath, broadcast plainly for all to see. I imagined a sixteen-year-old village girl confronted by howling witch children and seeing these images upon entry to the shrine, and I began to understand the awful power of this man.

I took a few steps forward, keeping my senses trained on my surroundings to catch any sudden movements. I took a seat on the front bench, and one of the priests in red robes entered from a side door holding an oatmeal colored beverage in a glass.

“We will be having an important ritual here tomorrow night,” GT replied, “I will send a driver to bring you. You will be my guest. Where are you staying?”

There have not been many studies on the madams of Edo State to explain how they operate and how they recruit sex trafficking victims from the region. One study conducted in Benin City in 2004 found that one-third of women surveyed had been approached by a madam who offered to help them get to Europe for work.5 Roughly 97 percent of respondents knew what sex trafficking was, and 70 percent had relatives working in prostitution in Europe, most of whom had been recruited by madams.⁶ The madams and the system they represent seem to be well known to the women of Edo State. Given their central role in the sex trafficking chain from Nigeria, I endeavored to meet as many as I could.

Most madams in Nigeria live in Benin City or in Lagos. It was relatively easy to meet them, and most were quite willing to speak with me. The conversations I had with the madams were remarkably similar to each other, and also remarkably similar to the conversations I had with gharwalis in the brothels of India. In both cases, the women saw themselves as doing a favor for poor, illiterate girls by providing them with opportunities for a better life. The concept of “sex trafficking” had little meaning to them, and they did not perceive any fault with what they were doing. Five of the six madams I interviewed in Nigeria were former sex trafficking victims themselves (not that they saw it that way). This was the natural progression, in their eyes, of hard-working, dutiful girls who keep their oaths and repay their debts.

The most extensive conversation I had was with a madam named Love. She was thin compared to the other heavy-set madams I met, and there was even a hint of kindness in her eyes. She was intelligent, practical, and quite at ease with her vocation. She explained that she first left Edo State after taking a juju oath at the age of sixteen. She worked for four madams across Europe for five years, after which she was told that her debt had been repaid. At the tender age of twenty, she was ready for her new life.

“We also have a right to our profit for housing them and teaching them and giving them this opportunity to be wealthy for the rest of their lives. It’s like an internship, you see. Don’t they have this in your country? Why is this so hard for you to understand?”

Traditional cultural beliefs across Nigeria, including in the Yoruba tradition, view same-sex preferences as dirty, unnatural, and pathological.7 Even secular law is set harshly against same-sex relations, which in the southern states are punishable by up to fourteen years in prison,⁸ and in certain northern states that have adopted Shari’a law the punishment may be stoning to death.

Despite the brutalities she had endured, Sandra remained remarkably cheerful about her future. She had even recently started going to school.

“I am going to study law, so I can fight for justice for women like me,” Sandra told me.

If Sandra’s story were not harrowing enough, I heard stories from two other young women at her shelter, Veera and Precious, that were even more disturbing. They had both recently been rescued from a “baby factory” in Lagos. They were eighteen and nineteen years old and had been locked inside a building in the outskirts of the city for a few years, where they were forcefully inseminated and kept imprisoned throughout their pregnancy.

“There was a nurse who fed us,” Precious explained, “And a doctor came to examine us and deliver the babies.”

Veera and Precious both delivered two babies while they were held captive. The babies were rumored to have been sold for international adoptions.

“Some of the other girls in that place said the babies might be used for sacrifice by juju priests,” Veera added.

I asked how many girls were in the baby factory with them, and they said there were over thirty. I had heard anecdotes about these factories but had considered them to be an urban myth until I met two girls who had actually been in one. News stories revealed very little in the way of corroboration, but I did come across a few instances, including a case in 2013 of seventeen girls in Imo State who were locked inside a baby factory, each impregnated by a single man. The girls gave birth to babies who were again rumored to have been sold for international adoption.9 The conditions Veera and Precious described were impossible to imagine. The notion of being forcefully impregnated and held captive like a breeding animal left me nauseated. The rumor that some of these babies were used in black magic juju rituals was beyond reckoning. Precious insisted it was true and told me about a place, called Jankara Market, where items for black magic juju rituals could be found. She told me that at the southeast corner of the market I would find dried monkey heads, animal skins, insects, frogs, and, in very secret places accessible only to insiders, human body parts, including from babies. I went to the market, to the southeast portion, and I saw all manner of creatures for sale, but nothing human.

After meeting Veera and Precious, I tried vigorously to find one of the baby factories in Lagos, but I was not successful. Every lead I explored turned up empty. The Nigerian mafia is said to operate the factories, so there are considerable risks relating to how far one can push. To my knowledge, no one knows exactly how extensive this phenomenon is in Nigeria, or in other countries across western Africa where similar rumors persist. It is one of the most abhorrent forms of sexual slavery I have ever encountered, all the more so because the result is the birth of an innocent child who is either sold off to international adoption or, if the darker rumors are true, killed in blood sacrifices.

The first factor of Nigeria’s history that informs its present state of unrest is the religious divide between Muslims in the north and Christians in the South.11 Islam arrived in West Africa around one thousand years ago, culminating in the creation of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1804, which consolidated the northern half of Nigeria under Islamic rule. At that time, the southern portion of the country was dominated by the Yoruba culture and the Benin Empire. Christianity, which was brought by the colonial powers, was also growing in influence. These religious divisions ossified, resulting in ongoing clashes and strife. The south controls the all-important oil ports, which further exacerbates tensions. Religious conflict has raged across the country for decades, leaving the poorest people of Nigeria desperate to find safety abroad, which fuels human trafficking. The raids, murders, and human trafficking activities of the Boko Haram, beginning in 2013, are the most extreme expressions of the clash of cultures between extremist Islam and the more moderate Muslims and Christians in the country.

The second factor of Nigeria’s history that influenced the current state of violence and instability in the country was the discovery of oil in the Delta region by Shell-BP in 1957. This discovery preceded Nigerian independence by three years and has precipitated several decades of military strife among those seeking control of oil territories. The strife was exacerbated by the fact that the boundaries drawn at independence forced together three highly disparate and incongruous ethnic groups—Hausa-Fulani in the north, Yoruba in the southwest, and Igbo in the southeast—and forced them under a single governance in the south, where the oil was found. As a result, the first few decades of Nigerian self-rule were mired by strife among the disparate tribes and communities of the nation for control of land and oil. Major ethnic riots in 1962 and 1964 relating to regional land divisions and accusations of rigged elections rocked the country. In 1966, a group of Igbo army officials led by Major General Johnson T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi overthrew the elected government and assassinated Prime Minister Balewa (a Fulani) and several senior officials in the government. Ironsi named himself president and instituted martial law. The Muslim community in the north naturally viewed the coup as a Christian attempt to undermine their customs and take control of the oil resources in the south, resulting in mob violence and thousands of deaths. Military leaders in the north staged a coup against Aguiyi-Ironsi four months after his coup, assassinating him and retaking control of the country. Ethnic violence between the north, south, and east raged for several years, culminating in a declaration on May 30, 1967, by the military leader of the eastern region, Lieutenant Colonel Odemugwu Ojukwu, that his territory was to be a separate nation called the Republic of Biafra. The military government in Lagos promptly responded with a declaration of war on the Republic of Biafra. Biafra was supported by France, and Lagos received support from Great Britain and the USSR. This postcolonial proxy war left 3 million Nigerians dead. On January 12, 1971, the Biafran forces surrendered, but the country was in ruins. The Biafran war remains one of the bloodiest postindependence civil wars in postcolonial history, and its crippling effects are felt by millions of Nigerians to this day.

The third factor that contributed to Nigeria’s contemporary human trafficking crisis involved a series of coups and riots throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Angered by the imbalanced allocation of the country’s newfound oil wealth, Army Brigadier Murtala Mohammed from the north led a coup and took control of the country in 1975. The very next year, Mohammed was assassinated and replaced by a Yoruba military leader from the south. The country returned to civilian rule in 1979, but the oil bubble burst in 1981 and the country fell into massive debt, escalating inflation, and broad-scale unemployment. Riots followed, and thousands of people were killed. Those who had made their wealth during the oil boom of the 1970s took their money out of the country as quickly as they could. The 1980s were marred by one military coup after another, leaving the country in a constant state of disarray. The country’s debt skyrocketed and per capita income fell to below $300 per year. In an effort to quell the strife between north and south, the capital of the country was moved from Lagos to Abuja in 1991. Nonetheless, corruption, coups, civil unrest, and the allocation of oil income to a small wealthy elite have typified Nigeria’s political and economic realty for the last few decades. When oil prices boom, the money flows in; when prices bust, the country suffers from massive increases in debt and inflation. The most recent drop in oil prices in 2015 put severe pressure on the poorest in the country, increased ethnic violence, and pushed peasants to migrate abroad in search of income and security. All the while, violence between Muslims and Christians shows few signs of abating. The unfortunate truth is that disparate and incongruous ethnic groups were thrust together at independence, and oil was found in just one part of the country, leading to a series of devastating coups and clashes that have resulted in decades of suffering. This suffering is unquestionably more real and painful than the prospective harms most any Nigerian would face by accepting an offer from a human trafficker. In this context, millions of poor Nigerians remain eager to flee their country, and traffickers are only too happy to assist them.

Most of the slave museums and historic buildings in Badagry are located on Marina Road, which runs parallel to the coastline. The first historic site I visited was the Vlekete Slave Market, build by the Portuguese in 1502. The market was named after a local deity, Vlekete, goddess of the sea. The original structure was destroyed in 1852, but it was subsequently rebuilt and turned into a two-story museum that chronicles the slave trade that took place at the market for 350 years. Indeed, Vlekete was one of the first and largest slave-trading markets where Europeans bartered with African slave dealers who brought slaves from the inland regions. At its peak, it was open for business seven days a week, with 150 slaves typically sold each day. Europeans inspected each slave prior to negotiating a price. Were they young, fit, and healthy or older and diseased? Once prices were agreed upon, the buyers paid in spirits, guns, silk, beads, cannons, cotton, and other commodities. The slaves they purchased were taken to holding cells, called baracoons, where they were crammed fifty or more into a 9 foot by 9 foot room, forced to defecate, urinate, sweat, sleep, and agonize on top of each other. They could spend months in these cells, waiting to be shipped to the Americas, branded with the name of the slave trader who purchased them. There were once several baracoons in Badagry, but only one of the buildings stands today: the Seriki Faremi Williams Abass Brazilian Baracoon. It is a yellow-painted building with a rusted tin roof, built in 1840. Seriki Abass was a former slave from Yorubaland who was sold as a child to a Portuguese slave trader and trafficked to Brazil. His owner taught him to read and write, and Abass learned several languages, including Portuguese. Years later his owner told him he would set him free on condition that he work for him as a slave dealer back in Africa. Abass agreed. He returned to Badagry, where he built his slave baracoon and began dealing with African slave traders to acquire slaves to sell to the Portuguese. Rusted chains, shackles, and mouth muzzles used to restrain the slaves were on display when I visited the Brazilian Baracoon. Each restraint came in smaller sizes as well, for children. Abass went on to become a very wealthy and powerful man, with 128 wives and 144 children. He died in 1919 and is buried at his Baracoon compound at Badagry, haunted no doubt from every direction by the boundless wails of despairing slaves.