Girls between the ages of 12 to 17 are being trafficked in Nigeria to work as domestic help.

From the AFP:

The trafficking of teenage girls from poor villages to northern Nigerian cities to work as domestic help for meagre wages is on the rise, officials said at the weekend.

“The business of recruiting teenagers as domestic help is booming despite our efforts to put a stop to it,” said Bello Ahmed, head of the Kano office of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), in charge of 18 northern and central states.

The girls, usually between the ages of 12 and 17, are paid around 1,500 naira (13 dollars, eight euros) a month, money that they send to their parents, Ahmed told AFP.

However meagre the wage, for the parents it means a little more cash and one mouth fewer to feed.

Ahmed said NAPTIP has succeeded in putting a stop to the practice of ferrying the house girls into the cities in trucks “like chickens”.

But if transport methods have improved somewhat, the trafficking continues.

Human Trafficking is a $32 billion market.