Migrants rescued after Libya cell video goes viral

LAGOS: Nigerian migrants held in Libya were rescued after releasing a video from their cell that went viral on social media and caught the attention of authorities.

A group of migrants held inside a detention centre in Zawiya in Libya, risked their lives to shoot the video in July, showing poor living conditions and people pleading for help.

“They refuse to deport us,” says a man in the video that was shared over Whatsapp and other social networks. “We are suffering here, we are dying here... they are keeping us here for business.” The video was sent to France 24 Observers, a citizen journalism initiative, in July.

After seeing the video, the journalists lagged the attention of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which helps organise voluntary returns from Libyan detention camps.

The migrants returned to Nigeria on Aug.30.

“If not for that video we wouldn’t have been able to come back to Nigeria, I believe that,” Efe Onyeka, a 25-year-old Nigerian who shot the video, told AFP on Sunday. Onyeka was arrested trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe where he had dreams of becoming a footballer.

Shooting the video put his life in danger. Another Nigerian who helped ilm was almost beaten to death by guards, said Onyeka.

“They beat all of us,” Onyeka said, speaking from Nigeria’s Delta state. “They used pipes and sticks, they would not give us food.” “We were underfed, the water, it was from the latrine,” Onyeka said.

In the end, Onyeka spent over four months in detention.

“I’m traumatised. I have nightmares about Libya, about the prison,” he said. “The journey is not worth it.” Onyeka is one of about 2,700 migrants who have made it back to Nigeria through IOM’S voluntary return programme this year, said the body’s Nigeria spokesman Jorge Galindo.

“It wasn’t an exceptional case in the sense that their conditions are bad,” said Galindo.

“But in terms of people making videos that have managed to get into the hands of journalists, I’ve rarely heard about this before.” Since the voluntary return programme began in 2017, close to 10,000 Nigerians have come home, said Galindo.

On Sept.10, the United Nations criticised Nigeria for failing to tackle human traficking, after a human rights mission looked at efforts to stamp out the organised trade in people.