At least, about 171 Nigerians stranded in Libya, were brought back to the country yesterday by Nigerian Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in collaboration with International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
At press time, about 91 other deportees were being expected from Italy. The fresh deportation brings to 643 Nigerians who had been rescued and brought back to the country since December 2016 when the government commenced rescue of the citizens after distress calls that the Libyan authorities were killing and maltreating Nigerians who were in the country for the proverbial Golden Fleece.
Some of the female returnees gave chilly accounts of their ordeal in the hands of the Libyan authorities. According to them, the Libyan officials usually sold into slavery those who refused to go into prostitution which is a thriving business in the Maghreb region.
One of the returnees, who simply gave her name as Favour, said she was lured into the trip by a man in Benin, Edo State.
Favour added that her initial destination was Italy but ended up in the most horrific place.
According to her, she does not know the whereabouts of four other ladies who travelled with her.
She said: “One Kingsley came to me and told me about the attractiveness of Italy. He said he was ready to take me there to improve my living condition.
"The picture he painted was very attractive to ignore. We started the journey in September last year.
"We took a bus from Onitsha to Kano. From there we passed through the desert to Niger boarder. The security people at the Niger boarder collected N1,000 from us before they allowed us to pass and from there to Agadez.
"We spent two days there and from there to Sarba, which is the last town before Tripoli. We spent two weeks in the desert. Some fainted, others died in the desert.”
Favour added that when efforts to lure her into prostitution failed, she had to escape from her captors but was eventually captured and taken to a detention camp where they were kept for two months before their deportation. She disclosed that at the detention camp, they were maltreated, beaten and starved of food for days.
According to her, they were only fed once a day while they were also deprived of opportunity to bathe for days. Another returnee, Ayomide Ajeyibi, an OND graduate from the Polytechnic, Ibadan, said her dream had always been to go to Libya in search of work after many years of joblessness.
She disclosed that she paid N1.2 million to a man who took her to Libya.
She said she got a job with an Arab company which paid her N50,000 monthly. Ajeyibi, however, said she was arrested in a bus on her way to work.
She said: “They arrested all the blacks in the bus and said we should go back to our country. They took us like common criminals and whisked us away to detention camps. It was a great torture. We were maltreated and beaten by the police.”
New Telegraph
