Demand for Cheap Labour and Commercial Sexual Exploitation as Drivers of Human Trafficking in Edo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The demand that fuels trafficking is generally not studied systematically, but poverty, family pressure, and criminal networks which enable trafficking from Edo State are explained. The question asked in this paper is what have been the reasons human trafficking is encouraged in Edo State. In other to answer this question, empirical historical design was utilised, by means of secondary data from peer-reviewed studies, institutional data, government reports and documented investigations published primarily during 2021-2025. The evidence is structured in terms of three aspects of demand: low-cost labour, demand for commercial sexual services, and demand for controllable workers in both labour and sexual markets. Transaction cost economics suggests that when the intermediaries can recruit, relocate and manage workers via debt, oaths, and weak enforcement, the evidence shows that those intermediaries generate profit from vulnerability, which allows them to meet their demand. According to transaction cost economics, intermediaries make profit from vulnerability, and they can meet demand, when they can recruit, move and control workers cheaply, using debt, oaths and weak enforcement. Best documented are commercial sexual services and controllability, while thinner, but not absent, are labour demands in Edo State. The paper argues that demand has been a strong reinforcing condition and not the only one, as a reinforcing condition of the vulnerability of the supply side. It suggests the licensing of recruitment intermediaries, the tracing of financial and financial gains from trafficking and the prosecution of the practice of coercion via an oath taking.

Keywords: Human Trafficking; Edo State; Demand; Cheap Labour; Commercial Sexual Exploitation; Transaction Cost Economics.