Nigerian migrants return from Libya with tales of horror
LAGOS, Nigeria — Some knelt and placed their foreheads to the ground in prayer. Several carried small children. After being stranded in Libya on a failed attempt to reach Europe, more than 400 Nigerian migrants were brought home and began sharing stories of abuse and fear.
“If they lock you up in a room, you hardly eat, that’s number one,” Ejike Ernest, one of the returnees, told The Associated Press on arrival late Tuesday in Lagos. “You’ll urinate there, you’ll defecate there and every morning, let me say three times a day, you will be severely beaten” until you can pay the money to be freed.
Nigeria’s government, its president appalled by recent CNN footage of a slave auction in Libya where migrant Africans were “sold like goats,” has committed to bringing its citizens home, along with a number of other African nations.
After disembarking from a plane chartered by Nigeria, the European Union and the International Organization for Migration, some of the newest arrivals looked exhausted, some clutching sleepy children. Some were astonished by the way they had been treated.