“We are not the ones teaching these women to smoke drugs. The white man smokes drugs more than any others – they pick up the girls and like to tell them to smoke. It is not us Nigerians.”

The words of a Nigerian drug dealer, who says for too long he and his brothers have been wrongly portrayed as evil captors who force-feed girls crack and heroin and then prostitute them so that they can pay for their drugs.

“It was such a shock when I saw her. There she was, with the hotel name above her. I’ve slept by the phone every night for 8 months now. Sometimes she would ring at two or three in the morning, crying and I wouldn’t know where she was.”

Next to Laura on screen was her Nigerian, a man known as Don King.

Through a church group in PE, Ann Keenan established that Laura urgently needed medical attention. She had been injecting heroin into her leg and had developed a deep vein thrombosis. She managed to get Laura admitted to hospital.

“As soon as Laura was taken out of that hotel, within 10 minutes he phoned me complaining I had cost him money. I said: what about my daughter’s life? He won’t let go…”

The program also investigates the actions of the police in Port Elizabeth, who have begun cracking down on places like the Belvia Hotel. But we reveal how easy it is for illegal immigrants to bribe the police in order to stay in the country.

This fascinating insight into the lives of Nigerians and their women, against the backdrop of the city of Port Elizabeth, was directed by Jessica Pitchford, with camerawork by Byron Taylor and Ivan Oberholzer.