Well, I was born and raised in Nigeria and I witnessed firsthand the effects of trafficking in children. Young children are brought into cities from villages and from around West Africa to serve as domestic servants in Nigerian households. They are treated as commodities, and used and discarded by the families they serve when they outlast their use. A lot of them run away frequently, but unable to find their way back from whence they came, they end up on the streets.

Yes, it is true that Eyo is a work of fiction but it is rooted in personal experience gleaned from my childhood in Nigeria, from professional experience as a human rights worker working in Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone and of course, from my conversations with practitioners campaigning against child trafficking.

In the early days of writing Eyo, someone got hold of some sample chapters and accused me of sensationalising human trafficking. At first, I was insulted. I was writing about something I was passionate about, that I knew I could verify because, heck, I’d seen it for myself. Then I got irritated with myself for allowing the person to affect me with her negativity. It wasn't like I didn't know what I was talking about. Like I said, I was born in Nigeria. Its economy is built on the blood of lost childhoods.

I spent about four years in boarding (secondary) school in Nigeria. In all that time, we heard persistent rumours of a Nigeria-Italy prostitution ring. We would go home for the summer holidays and when we got back to school in September, hear whispers of certain girls who weren’t coming back because, whisper it, they were Italy. And today, Nigerian children and adults consistently top the list of trafficked people from Africa into Europe.

A scene in Eyo features a dog. Again, that was rooted in material I came across in my research and of course, a throwback to a famous newspaper report in Nigeria concerning a dog, an expat Englishman and a prostitute. I’ll leave it there.

I was asked that once by a reporter. I don’t much like the idea of writers having a ‘message.’ Our job is to write and let our readers take from our work what they will. However, I recognise the need for soundbites, so here goes:

I wrote Eyo because I wanted to write a book about African children.

Eyo is published in Kenya by WordAlive. It is not yet available in the UK, however, limited copies are available for sale, from the Shop. Eyo, the ebook, is available from Amazon and all major etailers.