Considered as “the ebaka”, the supreme leader in France of a Nigerian criminal organization, Isi Omoijiade, 43, alias “Papa Zion”, was sentenced Thursday to the maximum sentence of ten years in prison for human trafficking humans and aggravated pimping.
For the nine other defendants, including seven “mamas”, these ex-prostitutes who became pimps, the Marseille criminal court pronounced sentences of three to nine years’ imprisonment and for the most part a definitive ban on French territory.
“An international mafia-like criminal group”
Isi Omoijiade ran a pimping network forcing many Nigerian women to prostitute themselves in trucks or in the street, in Lyon and its suburbs. Officially a maintenance worker in a cleaning company, he in fact headed the French branch of the Supreme Eiye Confraternity (SEC), a former student brotherhood of the University of Ibadan (southwest of Nigeria) which, according to the police, became judiciary, “an international mafia-like criminal group”.
This criminal organization had divided France into seven regions, the telephone tapping illustrating the role of Isi Omoijiade in the appointment of regional officials.
“Behind the lambda life of a humble man who picks up his children from school”, he was “untouchable”, with “the extraordinary status of ebaka in France”, insisted the prosecutor during this open trial since October 10.