• ‘I sold my assets to make the trip, but returned empty-handed’
• ‘I watched Nigerian girls rounded up and burnt alive’
By Louis Ibah
With his eyes shut and his right hands spread over a plastic bowl full of jollof rice with a piece of chicken, Tony Osa offered a short prayer before meal. “Lord I thank you for this food; I also thank you for bringing me back alive. Take all the glory Lord.” He opened his eyes with a long hiss. The meal, he claimed, was his first real meal in over four weeks.
He picked up the piece of boiled chicken and took a bite. “You see this chicken part that I am eating? Where I am coming from, this is the meat that 20 people would struggle to share on a day that they added meat to the food they served us,” he said.
Osa, a native of Edo state was relaying his experiences in a Libyan deportation camp where he spent over four weeks following his arrest at a bakery where he was working. “They made sure that if we ever left Libya alive, we won’t ever dare to come back again,” he said of the Libyan security personnel at the deportation camp. “They starved us of food and water and at night they would just come and play games with us as if we are animals. They would beat us and asked us to jump up and down and if you cried they would double your punishment,” he added.
Osa, was among the latest batch of 171 illegal Nigerian immigrants repatriated from the detention centres in Libya on March 6, 2017.
In the last two years, the Libyan government in a move targeted at the conserving its lean finances and to halt the pressure on its overstretched infrastructure allegedly by foreigners, has mounted a vigorous campaign to rid the country of illegal immigrants. It is an exercise alleged to be accompanied by the torture and even killings of illegal immigrants who are most often picked up either on the streets, in their workplace or residences and thrown into prisons or dentention centres in Tripoli or Bengazi.
According to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, sometimes in 2016 the Federal Government received a distress call from the Nigerian Embassy in Libya and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) on the maltreatment or abuses of illegal Nigerian immigrants caught in Libya. “We had to move fast to rescue our citizens in Libya,” Dabiri-Erewa said, adding that” in fact, there was a Presidential directive issued that all Nigerians trapped anywhere in the world whether as illegal immigrants or as persons trafficked must be brought back home alive,” she said.
Commissioner for the National Commission for Refugees and Migrants, Mrs. Sadiq Farouq who was at the Lagos airport to receive the 171 Nigerian migrants on behalf of the Federal Government frowned against the use of any name that appeared derogatory or a stigmatization of their persons. “They are Nigerians first and we call them irregular migrants and not illegal immigrants,” she said.
“They went in search of greener pastures and haven’t found none where they went to, they have agreed to voluntarily return to their country and we welcome them as our citizens,” she added.
Once the returnees disembark from the aircraft that flies them into the country through the Hajj camp of the Lagos international airport, they are first profiled by Immigration officials to ascertain that they are truly Nigerians. It is a process that takes about two to three hours. Having been cleared by Immigration, they are received with handshakes and hugs by officials of NEMA, NAPTIC and IOM who would hand them envelopes containing about N19,500 after which food and water would be provided for them.
Osa and his group comprising 95 males and 76 females, among them 12 children were brought back in a chartered Burag Air aircraft through the Murtala Muhammed International Airport Lagos. He, however, told Sunday Sun that the majority of Nigerians apprehended by the Libyan Immigration and Police were merely using Libya as transit point and never intended to live in the North African country.
“Our final destination is usually Europe; maybe Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Spain and Portugal,” he said. “Libya is a beautiful country and their currency is strong, but who wants to live permanently in a country that is so hostile to foreigners?”
According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) about 643 Nigerians residing illegally in Libya had been successfully brought back to Nigeria between December 2016 and March 2017. The return of these Nigerians stranded in detention camps in Libya had been made possible through the collaborative effort of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Nigerian Embassy in Libya, the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, the National Agency for the Protection of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), and NEMA. But aside Libya, in recent months, about 200 more Nigerians have been deported from the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and even Mali with most of the deportees being victims of human trafficking.
Tales of horror
“I hid somewhere one day and watched as they rounded up a group of Nigerian girls and branded them as prostitutes and burnt them. They didn’t even shoot them with guns. But they just set the house they were living in ablaze and prevented them from running out; most of them died.
“In Libya once you are black they attach less value to your life. And if they suspect that you are an illegal immigrant, then you are as good as a person that has been condemned to death. It is worse for the girls, because they price them as commodities in the market and can do whatever they want with them,” Osa revealed.
Another returnee, Godson Eboigbe from Edo state, told Sunday Sun how he sold all his belongings to make the trip to Libya believing he would eventually cross over to Germany. “Please help me tell Nigerians that they should never allow anyone lure them into going to Europe through Libya because it is a journey into destruction and death.
“I am from Ishan South in Edo State and I was a trailer driver in my state until one day when a friend came and suggested the idea of going to Europe to me and I regret paying attention to him that day.
“I resisted initially but when he told me the opportunities that abound in Europe and that even the few months I would spend in Libya before crossing over I would make more money than I was making in Edo state, I agreed to follow him.
“I sold all my properties. In fact I spent over N700,000 on my trip and we went by road from Edo to Kano and from there to Niger and into Libya. I spent over one year and three months working in Libya at a construction site. I do all these PVC jobs. I was earning good money about N55,000 monthly in naira equivalent. But one day the Police burst into the house where I was living with other Nigerians and they arrested us and said we were illegal immigrants. They beat us and took us to a detention centre where we were not given food and water for days. Then later the IOM people came to that centre and I said I want to return to Nigeria. The only painful thing to me is that I came back empty-handed. I spent over N700,000 to travel, but all what I laboured for they didn’t allow me to carry along on the day they arrested me and took me to the detention centre.
I lost about N300,000 which was in the house I lived when they arrested me. They beat us, they mocked us, they treated us like animals at the detention centre. I was having nightmares everyday. I feared I could even die. And they said they would take us to prison if no one came to take us back. There are many Nigerians in prison in Tripoli. I didn’t want to stay in prison that’s why I volunteered to come back. Now, is it this N19,500 that they have given me that I will use to start my life again in Nigeria?”
Another returnee, who simply gave her name as Mercy also from Edo state said she had completed her secondary school education and was waiting for her admission into the university when a friend came and lured her into going to Libya with the promise to eventually cross over to France.
Mercy who sobbed throughout the interview said she was taken to Libya on credit. “It was my friend’s elder brother that came and said I was wasting my time in Benin and that all my mates were making good money in Europe and were assisting their families back home. In Benin we know them as trolley (a term used to describe persons engaged in human trafficking). This man said it would cost me about N400,000. I told him I didn’t have such money but he said he would assist me that I would have to work briefly in Libya and pay him back.
I signed an agreement with him with other people as witnesses and agreed to be taken there on credit. We went by road, by bus from Edo to Kano. This is my first time of boarding an airplane and visiting Lagos as they deported us. This man said he would assist me to cross over to Europe; my target was Paris. But when we got to Libya, he said I would work as a prostitute to make quick money and pay him back. But I told him that due to my upbringing as a Christian, I could not do it. He thereafter grudgingly took me to an Arab woman who hired me as a house help saying that the prostitution work would have brought out more money in a shorter period for him to recoup his investment. The Arab woman took good care of me. I was assisting her in cleaning her house, washing her clothes, and going on errands for.
Until the day I was arrested by the Police and taken to the detention centre. Life in the detention centre was like hell. I saw a lot of Nigerians there. We were packed like sardines. We were all starving; no good food, no water, no good sleep, and all sorts of harassment at night. You are lucky if you don’t fall sick, because if you do, you can die. I spent five months in Libya and that woman was paying me about N70,000 every month. But all that money I laboured for will be given to the man that took me there because he will come at the end of the month to collect it since he took me there on credit. That is my biggest regret. I was sold into slavery; the man didn’t have any plan to take me to France as I was made to believe.
I cry every time I remember that I was sold into slavery. I was not abused sexually; I was treated well. My only pain is that I was working and another person was reaping. He took more than he spent to take me there. I leave him to God. But I thank God that I am back alive, Nigeria is my country and I know I will marry, and I will succeed one day to go to the university and will be a rich woman,” she added.
Another returnee, Ms. Gift John from Delta State said she had spent over three years in Libya and was working as a sales girl in a retail shop and earned the equivalent of N600,000 yearly before she was brought back. She had initially resisted to speak to this reporter shouting angrily repeatedly, “this country has failed me; this country has failed us. Why should I talk to you?” But with a little persuasion and the offer of a phone for her to make a call through to her father, she agreed to tell her own story. “Daddy, they have deported me,” were her first words as the call that took more than five times of her dialing finally went through. Tears were flowing freely from her eyes. “I am in Lagos. I am fine. Forgive me. Do you have anyone in Lagos that you can send to come and pick me up?”
Gift would later explain that her father is a Pastor and that peer group influence pushed her into joining a set of friends on the trip to Libya. “I am from Delta state but I was living in Benin. My father is a Pastor. I searched for job in Nigeria for years and I didn’t find any, that’s why I took the risk to go to Libya with my friends who never stopped telling me that I was a fool to think I could have a breakthrough in Nigeria,” she said.
“I was okay in Libya making like N600,000 every year and I was sending money back to my mother. But I was always scared. I was scared each time I remember the girls that died on our way to Libya. I was also scared of being arrested. Some of my friends that we traveled together are in prison. I was lucky that when they arrested me, they took me to the camp where they will deport me because the Police will just come and pick everybody that is black and say we are prostitutes.
I witnessed how they stormed a ‘Connection House’ and burnt some Nigerian girls alive because they were prostitutes. I am happy that I am back in my country. I have learnt my lessons. I won’t try it again; I won’t ever attempt leaving Nigeria for anywhere. But if I meet President Buhari, I will tell him to create jobs for girls in the country. Look at all of us that they are bringing back today, the majority are women. There is no job for us to do. In Libya, there are jobs only that the country is not safe. You can always find a job to do that gives you good money. Why would I go to suffer in another person’s country if I have something to do at home,” she added.
One of the returnees, Gift Peters from Delta State who volunteered to speak to journalists on behalf of the 171 returnees, said she was lured to Libya by a Nigerian man who promised to get her a job in Germany. Peters who broke down in tears while speaking said she lost some friends with whom she traveled to Libya.
“I traveled to Libya about 11 months ago. It was one man who took me there. I never knew I was being deceived into slavery because he said we were going to Germany. When we entered Libya this man sold us to someone that has a “Connection House” (a form of brothel used to transit migrants to Europe which also houses prostitutes) and that is where they started maltreating us.
“They would beat me if I failed to cooperate with them to do what they ask me to me. They would even ask some of the girls to urinate in a cup and I would be forced to drink it since I was stubborn. The place was filthy. They priced us as if we were fowls.
“The day that the Libyan people came to arrest us in that house, they just opened fire on us and killed some of us as we were running. I was lucky that I fell down and was arrested. Some of my friends were not lucky. They were killed. Their families will be thinking that they are in Libya or Europe, but they are all gone. There are still a lot of people that are stranded in Libya.
“I am appealing to the government to help bring them back,” she added.