•••say countrymen more wicked than Arabs
•Over 400,000 still stranded –AU Commission
In the midst of the uproar over revelations that
Libyan nationals are buying and selling migrants as slaves in Libya, Saturday
PUNCH has learnt that Nigerians based in the country also sell their
fellow countrymen.
This emerged as more Nigerians are repatriated by
the International Organisation for Migration with the backing of the European
Union in an ongoing exercise that has seen 1,295 retrieved from Libya in
November alone.
Since the beginning of 2017, IOM-facilitated
repatriation has brought back 5,578 Nigerian migrants, who were trapped in and
outside prisons across Libya.
On Thursday night, 150 migrants from mostly Edo
and Delta states arrived the country aboard a Buraq Airplane at the cargo
terminal of the Murtala International Airport, Lagos. It was two days after 239
migrants had also been brought into the country.
Many of the returnees, who were thankful for
being back, confirmed to Saturday PUNCH that they were sold by their
fellow countrymen, who were getting rich in Libya.
One of them, 26-year-old Odion Saliu, a
hairdresser from Edo State, said she was kidnapped and handed over to a
Nigerian, who forced her to call her mother.
According to her, her mother in Benin paid N200,000
but she was again sold by the same Nigerian for 3,000 dinars (about N794,000).
Saliu explained that the Nigerians spoke Pidgin
English and some Nigerian languages.
She said, “When I was kidnapped with others and
held for some weeks, the Arabs asked if I wanted to be taken to a Nigerian and
I readily said yes. I was very happy that I was going to someone from my
country. But it was a lie.
“The Nigerian they took me to locked me in a cell
and told me to call my mother and ask for N60,000. The man said he would sell
me to a connection house if my family did not get the money. I called to inform
my mother and the trafficker who facilitated my journey from Nigeria.
“But the trafficker spoke with them on the phone
and told them the amount they demanded was too small. They increased it to
N200, 000. My mother paid into an account after they provided her with the
account number over the phone.
“The Nigerian said if I wanted to cross the sea,
I had to pay him again. But when we got to the seaside, he sold me again.”
Another Edo State indigene, Sunday Anyaegbunam,
left Nigeria along with his wife in April.
He said during their nine-day journey through the
desert, they were sold twice by Nigerians.
According to him, when their Nigerian “burger”
(trafficker) sold them to another set of Libyan traffickers at Agadez, Niger,
the traffickers sold him and his wife to a Nigerian who took them to Sabha,
Libya, where they were separated in different cells.
“We were made to contact our families on the
phone and I had to ensure the payment of N400,000 for my release and N300,000
for my wife,” Anyaegbunam said.
Like others, he could only identify the Nigerians
trading in their countrymen in Libya through the Nigerian languages they spoke
and their accent.
He said, “The Nigerians selling people
in Libya are more wicked than many of the Arabs. I have never seen
people so heartless as the Nigerians who bought and sold me.
“There are many of them in Agadez and Sabha, who
are making so much money from selling their own people. But there are other
West Africans doing the business too.
“When you approach them and say, ‘Please, my
brother, help me.’ They would tell you, “No brother in the jungle.”
A 25-year-old woman, Esosa Osas, who was in Libya
for six months, said she also met many Nigerians selling their countrymen.
“You dare not talk to them, else they would beat
you and lock you up. They sell women for 5,000 dinars and men for N4,000
dinars. I noticed that the connection houses were also controlled by Nigerian
women.”
All these accounts were corroborated by
35-year-old Harrison Okotie who lived in Libya for three years until his
repatriation.
“Nigerians and Libyans are doing the business
like they are one big happy family,” he said.
Most of the migrants who arrived Nigeria on
Thursday were from Edo State.
Officials of the state’s task force on illegal
migration were on hand with luxurious buses to transport their people back
home.
A member of the task force, Mr. Okoduwa Solomon,
told Saturday PUNCH that his team had made six such journeys to the
airport within the last one month to take their indigenes repatriated from
Libya back home.
He said, “The first process is to take them
through counselling, then we profile them.
“After that, we put them in a home that the state
government has provided for the returnees. The Edo State Government is paying
each of the returnees from the state a stipend.
They are going to undergo a training in
agriculture, poultry, fishery and others to make them useful to themselves and
the system.”
Officials of the National Emergency Management
Agency coordinate the reception of the returnees at the airport.South West
Zonal Coordinator of the agency, Mr. Yakubu Sulaiman, said the returnees would
be lodged in a hotel where they would have the chance to clean up before their
journey back home.
Meanwhile, President, Women Arise and Centre for
Change, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, has called on the Federal Government to use all
diplomatic channels to prevail on the Libyan authorities to ensure the dignity
of our people.
She said in a statement on Friday that it was an
embarrassment that Nigerians who were treated like royalty in the past were
being dehumanised in a foreign land.
“We must build a country where our people have
opportunities to prosper and lead useful and productive lives and will only
travel on leisure and business and not as illegal migrants desperate to live
anywhere other than Nigeria,” she said.
Over 400,000 Nigerians, others still
stranded in Libya –AU Commission
Meanwhile, Head, African Union Commission, Moussa
Faki Mahamat, has said that over 400,000 Nigerians and others remain stranded
in Libya.
Hundreds of thousands more — “400,000 to 700,
000,” according to Mahamat — remain stranded.
European and African leaders have set themselves
a tall order to stamp out horrific abuse of African migrants, some of them are
Nigerians in Libya, where thousands are suffering in a vast, lawless territory.
On Thursday, a summit of the African Union and
the European Union set a goal of immediately repatriating 3,800 migrants
languishing in a camp near Tripoli.
But experts pointed to a daunting array of
hurdles, from extracting migrants in perilous situations to giving them
incentives to stay put when they return home.
Even so, the summit’s commitment, initiated by
outrage over a CNN television report on black Africans being sold as
slaves in Libya, is being welcomed.
“It is a step in the right direction,”
International Organisation for Migration Europe Director, Eugenio
Ambrosi, told Agence France Presse by phone from Brussels.
“It is a little bit too much to think it will
solve the slavery issue, but it would definitely mitigate (it) to some extent,”
Ambrosi said.
He said the summit also showed there was now
“international watchdog pressure” that could be brought to bear on the criminal
gangs, but it must be “sustained.”
The drive was announced at a meeting on the summit
sidelines organised by French President, Emmanuel Macron.
It brought together eight other EU and African
countries as well as the AU, EU and United Nations representatives.
Macron said the UN-backed Libyan government of
Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj had identified and granted access to the worst
camps to enable the returns of people who want to go home.
The Macron group also decided to work with a task
force, involving the sharing of police and intelligence services, to “dismantle
the networks and their financing and detain traffickers,” he said.
They pledged to freeze the assets of identified
traffickers. The AU is expected to set up an investigative panel and the UN
could take cases before the International Court of Justice.
Libya calls for campaign against human
trafficking
The Libyan government has condemned the reported
auction of West Africans in its capital Tripoli, noting that the criminal
practice was not part of the culture of the Libyan people.
It called for an international campaign against
illegal migration and demanded an end to “exploitation, the suffering of the
ambitious African man looking for better life in Europe and human trafficking
right from the country of source.”
Speaking on the alleged auction of West Africans
in his country at a press conference on Friday in Abuja, the Charge d’Affairs
and ambassador-designate, Libyan embassy in Nigeria, Dr. Attia Alkhoder,
explained that his government had ordered the relevant agency to carry out a
comprehensive investigation into the incident.
He said the government was concerned about
illegal migration and human trafficking, adding that Libya needed technical and
logistical support to control its southern border, which is the major route for
illegal migration across the Mediterranean Sea.
The diplomat criticised the media for attacking
and holding his country responsible for the slaves’ auction, noting that human
trafficking and the reported slaves’ auction were done by individuals and not
the Libyan authorities.
Alkhoder said, “Libya renews its call to put an
end to exploitation, the suffering of the ambitious African man looking for
better life in Europe and human trafficking.
“Libya calls for an international campaign to put
an end to this phenomenon by providing security and border control to end the
Libyan crisis, unify its government institutions and end the transition system
that contributed a lot in the weakening control of territory.”
The envoy noted that solving illegal migration
was a collective responsibility involving countries of origin, transit and
destination.
He added that Libya spent a lot of money
accommodating immigrants and facilitating their voluntary return to their
countries, insisting that curbing illegal migration needed serious coordination
of international efforts.
Returnees get N100m, 150 hectares of land
for farming
Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has approved
a seed capital of N100m and 150 hectares of land for 150 victims of human
trafficking, who recently completed skills acquisition training in the state.
Obaseki announced this on Friday during the
graduation of the participants of the programme, which was organised by the Edo
Agricultural Development Programme in Benin City, the state capital.
He also directed the Ministry of Agriculture and
Natural Resources to immediately liaise with the relevant authorities towards
securing the land for the returnees to commence their agricultural businesses.
According to the governor, the beneficiaries
would be put under the supervision of the Benin-Owena River Basin Authority and
the EADP.
Obaseki stressed the need for coordinated efforts
to end modern slavery.
He stated that the International Day for the
Abolition of Slavery, marked on December 2 annually by the United Nations,
should be seen as a day for deep reflection on how to bring the illicit trade
to an end.
Obaseki said, “We ordinarily should not be
talking about the menace of slavery given the experience we have had. But it is
a reality today and we have no choice but to tackle it.
“However, it is pertinent to point out the fact
that modern-day slavery, in its various forms, such as forced labour, debt
bondage, and human trafficking, has no place among us. To effectively abolish
slave trade as we have it today, it takes a coordinated, deep-reaching,
international coalition that will take into cognisance the various forms of
modern-day slavery and compel perpetrators to back down.”
He, however, commended the returnees, comprising
51 trained on crop production, 15 on agro-processing, 68 on livestock farming
and 52 on fish farming, for participating in the programme.
He also urged them to be ambassadors in the
state-wide campaign against human trafficking and illegal migration.
Earlier, the Programme Manager of the EADP, Mr.
Peter Aikhuomobhogbe, commended the state government for initiating the
training and expressed optimism that the trainees would put the skills acquired
to good use.
