Names marked with an asterisk* have been changed to protect interviewees' identities.

Kumasi, Ghana - Jennifer* has spent the last few weeks on the pavements of Vienna City, a hub in Kumasi, Ghana's second-largest city, which has a bustling nightlife.

She arrived in Ghana in May, having left a crowded hostel room in Lagos, Nigeria, hoping to secure work in sales or as a waitress and send her income to her mother in central Nigeria's Ondo State.

But after a one-day bus trip from Lagos to Accra, her dreams crumbled as she reached the green hills of Kumasi.

"Please, get me out of here, this life is devastating," she said.

"They put me immediately on the street, forcing me to prostitute from 8pm till morning, every day,'' she said in a bar on Harper Road, where Rihanna's songs crackled through an old sound system as other Nigerian women outside dressed in revealing clothes waited for clients.

"Each night, I receive up to eight clients, and end up having $20 to $25 in my hands,'' she said.

Most of her money goes back into the "system" - to a "madam", a Nigerian woman, and middlemen such as hotel managers.

Women and girls like Jennifer, with some as young as 14, are victims of a trafficking network that benefits several people from Nigeria to Ghana.

The old district of Dichemso, the heart of the business, lies on the opposite side of Kumasi's city centre.

"Dichemso is where Kumasi's sex industry is flourishing, thanks to different guesthouses and hotels, such as the Plaza," said Bright Owusu, an independent researcher who has spent the last three years meeting Nigerian women forced into prostitution in the city.

Twenty Nigerian women live at one of these guesthouses, which is controlled by a few men at the entrance.

Locked in her room, 26-year-old Blessing* shared her experience.

"I am the oldest of five sisters and brothers: when our parents died, I knew I had to take care of them,'' she said.

Local middlemen convinced her to leave Lokoja, in central Nigeria, to Ghana.

In Kumasi, "they introduced me to a woman, who brought me to a fetish priest and told me I owed her 8,000 cedis [about $1,500] for my transportation: I had to prostitute to pay that sum back".

In some African countries, a "fetish priest" serves as a mediator between the spirit and the living.

Blessing refused, and ran away.

Soon after, she received death threats in messages to her phone. "The madam said the priest would throw a curse against me, but I didn't want any debt,'' she said.

After working for four months at a local market, for barely $30 a month, Blessing ultimately turned to prostitution as the only way to pay college fees for her younger sisters.

"I don't like it here, but I have to resist,'' she said.

In one year in Dichemso, she said she has met dozens of women with similar experiences.

"Every day, Nigerian girls enter Ghana, undergo voodoo rituals and are put into prostitution, and nobody seems to care," she said.

"Through rituals, madams make sure that you'll pay back a debt," said Blessing.

Debts vary between $1,000 and $2,000, while prices "are as low as 5 cedis [$1] for a short [sexual encounter] - less than 10 minutes with the client - and up to 30 cedis for half an hour or more", she added.


Owusu, the researcher, explained: "Some of these women know they'll be coming for prostitution, but they don't know that once here, they'll lose control over their life."

Voodoo rituals play a central role.

"They are the most powerful bond, one that has a strong psychological impact," he said.

Read More: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/nigerian-women-ghana-exploited-smugglers-madams-priests-190827113452214.html