Thank heavens footballers kneeling down has ended all of this white privilege.
‘He bought me like a chicken’: the struggle to end slavery in Niger
For 15 years Amadou lived with her “husband” in northern Nigeria, cooking and cleaning for his four “official” wives, whom he had married in accordance with Islamic law, and their children, while also working in their fields and tending their livestock.
Barely fed, she would eat the family’s leftovers or steal handfuls of grain. She ran away dozens of times, returning to her family in Niger, but was always caught and brought back.
Slavery has a complex legacy in Niger. It was pervasive in west African kingdoms centuries ago but despite several attempts at abolition, it remains deeply entrenched.
The French colonial administration outlawed slavery in 1905 and it was also banned under the 1960 constitution, when Niger gained independence. Other attempts followed in 1999 and 2003, with a penal code that formally defined and criminalised the practice.
Yet there are still tens of thousands of enslaved people across Niger, according to Anti-Slavery International and Timidria; some estimates put the
number as high as 130,000. Most are descendants of people who were enslaved generations ago, living and working on the land of their ancestral “masters”, similar to serfs in Tsarist Russia.
Wahaya is one of the most prevalent forms of bondage in Niger. It is a system through which wealthy men and traditional leaders buy girls for sex and domestic work for as little as £200.
Today
wahaya is mainly practised in a southern region near the Nigerian border Timidria refers to as the “triangle of shame”. The tradition allows men who have the maximum of four wives permitted by Islamic law to take on concubines known euphemistically as “fifth wives”.
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