SLAVERY: 239 Nigerian migrants return from Libya

Nigerian migrants in Libya have stated returning home just as President Muhammadu Buhari revealed that the Federal Government had started bringing back stranded citizens of the country in Libya.

The development was sequel to a global outcry over reports that black migrants in Libya are being sold into slavery.
The slavery story in Libya had been trending on social media for weeks now, but a CNN aired footage which showed men being auctioned as farm hands in Libya after being smuggled across the Sahara, apparently gave the situation in Libya the attention it deserved.

Already, Libya’s U.N.-backed government has said that it is probing the allegation.
Buhari had on a tweet on his handle said, “The situation in Libya, of people being sold into slavery, is appalling and unacceptable. We will do everything to protect our citizens wherever they might be.”

He added that his government has “started bringing back home all Nigerians stranded in Libya and elsewhere.”

READ ALSO: EU-AU summit: Push for commission of inquiry on slave auction in Libya, SERAP urges Buhari

Consequently, the UN’s International Organization for Migration revealed that 239 Nigerians flew home from Tripoli on Tuesday.

According to the organisation, Nigerian migrants are at risk of exploitation, detention and abuse as they head north to Libya, in efforts to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
In a related development, the head of the African Union’s executive commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, on Thursday said around 3,800 migrants needed to be repatriated urgently from Libya.

“They want to get out of this mess as swiftly as possible,” he said at a summit of the AU and the European Union in Abidjan dominated by the issue of migrant abuse in Libya

He said there were between “400,000 and 700,000” migrants in Libya, and at least 42 migrant camps there.

 

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