Two news reports published by the Nigerian English-language newspaper “Business Day” and the “Daily Trust” website addressed the suffering of irregular migrants in Libya. They cited the Nigerian Senate’s call for the government to intensify efforts to urgently repatriate Nigerians stranded in Libya, rehabilitate them, and launch a national awareness campaign to curb irregular migration to conflict-prone areas.
The call came after the Senate adopted a motion titled “The Urgent Need to Protect Nigerians from Human Trafficking, Slavery, and Human Rights Abuses in Libya,” presented by Senator Aniekan Bassey, who expressed concern over the deteriorating conditions of detainees in “detention camps” inside Libya.
According to the two reports, which were monitored and translated by “Al Marsad,” Bassey stated that more than a thousand people were repatriated to Nigeria during the first quarter of 2025 after surviving torture, sexual assault, and organ harvesting. He cited the case of a young woman, Mercy Ologbenga, who sold her family’s property and dropped out of school in search of a better opportunity, only to end up detained in Libya for over a year and repeatedly forced to give her blood against her will.
For her part, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan said that women who were trafficked to Libya are now giving birth inside prisons. She called on the Nigerian Immigration Service and the Nigerian Correctional Service to coordinate with Libyan prisons to repatriate Nigerian female inmates with children. She added that many were “arrested after being sexually trafficked under inhumane conditions” and that some are exploited to satisfy the sexual desires of guards and officials.