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.

Source: PUNCH

There was a dramatic scene at the Zvishavane Magistrates’ Courts in Zimbabwe, after a woman stormed the court and caught her husband exchanging marital vows with his mistress.

Luckily for the woman, identified as Rudo Pedzisai, her husband, Tendai Gondwa and his mistress, Precious Muzenda had not been officially married when she stormed the court.

According to H-Metro, the groom, Tendai Gondwa, a bureau the changer, left his matrimonial home at midnight purporting to be going to another town, Gwanda, only for his wife to receive a phone call in the morning from an insider, informing her about the private wedding.

“The wife was sleeping at home when she got a private phone call telling her to rush to Zvishavane courts as her husband was about to tie the knot with another woman.

“Rudo tried to dispute what she was hearing as she least expected the news, but the private caller told her to rush there and confirm.

“Without wasting time, she just woke up and hired a taxi which rushed her to the courts and the couple was shocked when she stormed into the courts screaming,” said the source.

It was reported that Pedzisai could not believe her eyes as she found her husband dressed in a suit standing next to the bride.

She then told the magistrate that the groom was her husband and they had children together.

“We are still together and our marriage is still subsisting. He has not yet divorced me and when he left home last night he claimed to be going to Gwanda. I was phoned by a stranger telling me he was at the courts wedding another woman, that is why I rushed here,” said Pedzisai.

The magistrate without wasting time, cancelled the wedding after Pedzisai proved that she was still married to Gondwa.

In his ruling, the magistrate stated that with the facts brought forward, it showed that Gondwa and Pedzisai’s marriage still existed.

The bride, Precious Muzenda, dressed in a white gown cried uncontrollably after her supposed special day turned into a nightmare when magistrate Shepherd Mjanja cancelled the wedding.

Five young men who were sent to jail for an alleged murder, were discharged and acuitted by the Enugu High Court, after the court found them innocent of the crime, they apparently, knew nothing about.

According to reports, the young men have been in prison for five years, for a crime they knew nothing about.

After waiting to no avail for an eyewitness to come forward to testify against the them, the court ordered that they be released discharged and acquitted.

Facebook user, Chijioke Okibe, who shared a video of the excited youngmen wrote

“There were ecstatic jubilation of some awaiting trial men today at the Enugu high court complex when five of them who had spent five years in prison were discharged and acquitted of a crime they said they did not commit.”

“One of the freed men told me that their journey started since 2013 when they were detained by Enugu SARS at their cell but that it happened that one of the inmates who was asthmatic and was tortured by SARS men and that led to his death”

“Consequently according to the young man in his late twenties they were accused falsely of killing the young asthmatic boy.”

“Five of them were as a result incasarated for five years but were discharged and acquitted for want of diligent prosecution by Hon. justice C I Nwobodo today 29/11/17”

Tragedy struck the quiet town of Ogidi in Anambra state on Wednesday, 29th November, 2017 after a teacher died after flogging a student in her class.

According to reporter Eze Amadi, the mother of one 14-year-old Okafor Chinaza, a student of starlight secondary school, Ogidi – fought and killed her daughter’s teacher for flogging her.

According to information gathered: It was said that the student in question was flogged by her Igbo teacher and class mistress earlier in the morning for not sweeping the class according to class roster. When the teacher walked in to teach them, she found out that the class was dirty as she questioned the student why she didn’t carry out her duty. The student allegedly responded in an insulting manner to the teacher according to fellow student’s present in the class room.

In response, the teacher asked her to kneel down before the class but the student reportedly refused as the teacher annoyingly flogged her and she fled the class from the school fence, and ran home.

As at 3:23pm same day, she came back with a lady believed to be her mother and a young man who claimed to be the uncle. According to starlight secondary school security, she refused to introduce herself properly as she forced her way into the school and went to the classroom of the girl to find out that the said teacher had gone for private school teachers meeting same day. She was directed to the Proprietress’ office when they found out she had come for her daughter’s issue with a teacher of the school named Odilinye Rita.

According to the Proprietress, she said that she was with one of her employee named Okamelu Tochukwu (Physics Teacher) when the woman came to her office to vent her anger.

I was in my office with one of my teachers when she came in, after her report and confirmation from the students that the teacher flogged the said Okafor Chinaza, I pleaded with the mother and uncle to allow the school dive into the issue with diplomacy as revenge won’t yield needed result. She had accepted to forget and forgive as I promised her that we will handle the case with ease.

The teacher was believed to be coming back from the private teachers meeting she went to, when she met the student’s people. Upon getting close to them, the student who came with her mother and other relatives, pointed at the teacher to the mother as she rushed to hit her (the teacher) with the stick she had come with. After a while, the teacher collapsed and was rushed to Iyi-Enu Hospital Ogidi where the doctor confirmed her dead moments later.

Currently, the parents and the student are being detained by the police in Ogidi police station.

The vice chancellors of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Prof. Joseph Ahaneku, on Thursday said more than 40 percent of the staff of the university spend more time watching pornographic videos and other illicit films at work than doing the work for which they are employed.

The VC said he was able to monitor the development in offices on campus from his own network.

He said when he got the report of the trend and discovered that some people sat in their offices only to watch illicit movies during office hours, he took a decision to curb it by censoring internet services in the university from his office.

He said the staff of the institution had demanded computers to facilitate their jobs, only for them to use the computers for negative things.

The VC said, “This is one reason we shut down YouTube from the university’s resource centre.

“People should be made to be conscientious as well as do what they have been assigned to do and eschew indolence.

“There have been a lot of abuses on facilities that, ordinarily, should aid staff in their jobs and as a result plans s are underway to remove the televisions in central offices.

He said when he visited such offices, rather than find staff watching news programmes to obtain good information, they were engrossed watching illicit videos, thereby implying that some of them did not need the facilities.

Ahaneku added, “Spending government time without doing what one is paid for is an act of corruption.”

He said the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Unit of the university was working to curb corrupt practices among employees and students.

The vice chancellors of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Prof. Joseph Ahaneku, on Thursday said more than 40 percent of the staff of the university spend more time watching pornographic videos and other illicit films at work than doing the work for which they are employed.

The VC said he was able to monitor the development in offices on campus from his own network.

He said when he got the report of the trend and discovered that some people sat in their offices only to watch illicit movies during office hours, he took a decision to curb it by censoring internet services in the university from his office.

He said the staff of the institution had demanded computers to facilitate their jobs, only for them to use the computers for negative things.

The VC said, “This is one reason we shut down YouTube from the university’s resource centre.

“People should be made to be conscientious as well as do what they have been assigned to do and eschew indolence.

“There have been a lot of abuses on facilities that, ordinarily, should aid staff in their jobs and as a result plans s are underway to remove the televisions in central offices.

He said when he visited such offices, rather than find staff watching news programmes to obtain good information, they were engrossed watching illicit videos, thereby implying that some of them did not need the facilities.

Ahaneku added, “Spending government time without doing what one is paid for is an act of corruption.”

He said the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Unit of the university was working to curb corrupt practices among employees and students.

In what will come across as a really unusual development, some doctors in India were recently shocked to find a woman had been carrying a calcified foetus in her abdomen for the past 15 years.

According to a report by Daily Mail UK, the 52-year-old, who does not want to be named, terminated her pregnancy back then as her family allegedly did not approve of her having another child.

At the time, her obstetrician and gynaecologist treating her confirmed the baby was successfully aborted.

However, she went on to suffer abdominal pain over the years and visited several doctors, who only gave her painkillers and pills for acidity.

And for the last three years, she had been continually vomiting, raising alarm.

She then went to see a specialist who discovered the rare find – and has had a two-hour operation to remove the ‘fully grown stone baby’ as a medic described it.

Eventually, the woman, from a small village near Nagpur, in Maharashtra in the northern part of the country, met with a specialist.

Medics at Junankar Surgical Nursing Home, in Nagpur city, did a CAT scan and found an obstruction in her intestines, blocking the digestive system.

Dr Nilesh Junankar, a laparoscopic surgeon, said: ‘Her scan showed intestinal obstruction, a blockage in her food pipe along with a stone like structure.

‘Due to this unusual report, a laparoscopy was done and to our utter surprise, there was a four-month old baby in the abdomen. We were very shocked. It’s extremely rare.’

A team of two doctors decided to immediately operate and Dr Nilesh removed the dead baby in a two-hour operation on November 23.

Dr Nilesh explained: ‘It was a shock for everyone present in the operating theatre.

‘After opening the abdomen, a fully grown ‘stone baby’. However, her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes were totally normal.

‘The patient had stopped menstruating five years back and was not in a child bearing age.’

A stone baby, or Lithopedion as it is called in medical terms, is extremely rare. Only 300 such cases have been reported in the past 400 years worldwide.

‘Since no sonography was done, neither she nor the doctors thought the baby was still there,’ Dr Nilesh added.

‘The chance of abdominal pregnancy is one in 11,000 pregnancies and only between 1.5 to 1.8% of abdominal pregnancies develop into Lithopedia.

‘We have removed the stone baby from woman’s body and her four feet intestines have also been removed.’

The woman thanked the hospital for freeing her from a decade of pain and has since been discharged from the hospital.

A Nigerian returnee from Libya has revealed that 25 compatriots, ferried from Nigeria to Libya by a trafficker identified as Charles, perished in the Sahara Desert, in the course of the journey.

The returnee, who identified himself as Alex Otoide, from Edo state, said seven members of the group also died inside a Libyan jail.

“We were 55 that travelled from here to Libya, 25 people died in the desert.More than seven people died from hunger and thirst inside the prison”, Otoide said in a report published by TheNation newspaper today.

Otoide spoke with journalists in a government camp in Benin City.

He said the human trafficking agent, Charles collected the N500, 000 from him with a promise of a better life in Europe.He, however, regretted that instead of Europe, he ended up in a Libyan jail.

He said but for providence, things could have been worse for him as he witnessed the sale of 20 Nigeria girls in the prison where they were all kept.

“They sold about 20 girls in the night. I saw it. It was God that saved me.”
“I left Nigeria with N500,000. I spent six months in Libya jail after the man that took my money ran away.

The Nation reported that many of the returnees look skinny and exhausted while some of the women among them came back to the country with babies, whose fathers are not known.

Charles, the returnees said, is running a transit camp in Libya for those who wanted to travel illegally across the Mediterranean to Europe.

He regularly made a trip back to Nigeria where he persuaded desperate young men and women that he can help them to get to Europe from Libya for a fee of about N500, 000.

But according to the deportees, after collecting the money, Charles usually abandoned them in Libya.

The human trafficking kingpin reportedly operated several bank accounts with different names in Nigeria through which he collected money from victims.

They alleged Charles kept Nigerians for days without food in his camp in Libya. Many of the migrants don’t even make it to Libya as they died of exhaustion in the Sahara desert, according to the migrants.

Osas Blessing, one of the returnees said Charles is among those nicknamed “burgers” or “connection man” on the Libya route.

He said:

“I gave Charles N450, 000 but when I got to Libya he increased it to N600, 000. He is very wicked. He does not care for human life. He is a Benin man. He will say if you die you die. He pushed us into the sea at the wrong time.

“I heard he just left Nigeria with new passengers to Libya. He has frustrated many Nigerians.”