Òlòtūré, a Netflix Movie Depicts Nigerian Ladies Vulnerability to Human Trafficking.

What’s the movie about?

Òlòtūré is a crime drama set in Lagos, Nigeria; it is a story of a young, naïve female journalist who goes undercover to expose the shady underworld of human trafficking. It was premiered on Netflix on October, 2nd, 2020.

What’s the overall assessment of the movie in terms of its entertainment and human trafficking awareness raising?

Looking at Òlòtūré from edutainment point of view, the script writer(s) did a great job with the narrative structure, without being preachy, the core message was made clear – to the effect that offering

oneself to be trafficked or smuggled comes with a price which could ultimately lead to untimely death. You see the delemma of Ehi, who was on undercover assignment with sex workers, but unfortunately she was drugged and raped by one of her clients. The movie is educatively entertaining without being didactic.

As regards human trafficking awareness, one of the interesting aspects in the plot is the fusion of human smuggling and trafficking. Conceptually speaking, human traffickers are not necessarily smugglers, but in reality a human trafficker could be operating as a human smuggler at different legs of the journey. To be sure, human traffickers seek to exploit the migrants at transit and destination countries, they usually use 'travel now, pay later' package to lure folks into irregular migration journey; in most cases they don’t seek money from the potential migrants, but in the movie the potential migrants made payment before being enlisted. On the other hand, the smugglers are not interested in exploiting migrants at the transit or destination country, their job is basically to move people irregularly from one country to another, using fake travel documents and illegal routes. Irregular migration manifests in three ways: irregular entry, irregular stay/residence and irregular job. We can therefore say that all human traffickers are human smugglers, but not all human smugglers are traffickers.

What are the areas that could have been given more prominence in the story?

The major factor that make Nigerian ladies vulnerable to human trafficking was tokenized. What we see in the movie can be termed as the fruits, manifestations or processes of irregular migration; the roots, drivers and push factors of irregular migration from Africa to Europe aren’t really essentialized. Various migration reports have indicated that our ladies are endangered folks as far as human trafficking is concerned. For instance, the International Organization for Migration (IMO) estimates that 91% of victims trafficked from Nigeria are women, and their traffickers have sexually exploited more than half of them. Also a 2014 report by the International Labor Organization claims that human trafficking is a $150 billion global industry. And two-thirds of this figure is generated from sexual exploitation.

Essentially lack of jobs for ladies make them more vulnerable to sex trafficking. By extension, I could say that, eight out of every ten slay queens on social media are potential sex trafficking victims.

So what could government(s) do to create more jobs for women?

There are two ways to this, the first is the creation of student loan facilities for those seeking further education. Some ladies take to prostitution or become 'runs babes' because of lack of sponsor to finance their education. The Federal government could create students loans bank, where all you will need to access loan will be your admission letter to a tertiary institution. In Western countries, students’ loans are readily available. Secondly, governments at the Federal and the state levels should provide incentives and enabling environments for ladies to earn a living from the entertainment industry. For instance, governments' agencies could set up female creative workers hubs where: makeup artists, fashion designers, interior decorators, cake makers, writers, event planners social media content creators, graphic designers and other creative folks could meet to collaborate, learn and earn.

The female creative hubs will provide the platforms where skilled ladies could get gigs, acquire skills and hook up with mentors; the main goal of the hubs will be to enhance employability of creative folks.

What are other livelihood opportunities that could be targeted at girls who are not yet at tertiary institutions?

The demographic data of sex trafficking returnees depict that about 75% of them are senior secondary school certificate holders, this implies that, program targeted at senior secondary school girls will really help to stem the tide of sex trafficking. Now to answer your question, what could be done, might not necessarily be government-centric, each household has a role play. Parents should encourage their girl-child to start learning a trade as from senior secondary school one, possession of a marketable skills will open their eyes to legitimate means of making money and less vulnerable to enticement of sex traffickers or local pimps.

Olusoji AJAO is a Migration Governance expert, he tweets @ Olusoji Ajao