‘I am happy to be back’ – 17-yr-old girl breaks down in tears while narrating her horrific experience in Libya

83 of the 142 Nigerians deported from Libya on Monday were received by the Edo State government. They were received and lodged in a hotel with a view to rehabilitate them by the chairman, task force on trafficking, Prof. (Mrs.) Yinka Omoregbe, who is the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in the state.

A 17-year-old girl identified as Blessing Sunday, has narrated how she survived harrowing experience in the desert in her quest to get to Europe.


She was among the 147 Nigerians that were deported from Libya and was brought to Edo State yesterday.

She was all tears when she spoke of how her father sold his belongings to raise money to bail her after she was abducted and kept in a cell in Libya.

Blessing stated that she dropped out of school in Junior Secondary School to learn hair-dressing before a woman offered to assist her to travel abroad. She said several persons in the three Hilux vans they boarded from Kano to Libya died due to starvation and thirst.

“When we got to Libya, I was kidnapped. They made me go call my father and he sold his property to set me free. I am the last child of the family and we don’t have anything at home now.

There was no food or water in the trip. You see people dying. We bought provision and water and I managed my own in order to survive. My father sold all his property to enable me get to the seaside. I didn’t enter boat on the sea.”

Another returnee who gave his name as Micheal Ogbebor and had Plaster of Paris (PoP) on his two hands said he broke his two hands when the ‘White house’ in Suprata they were staying was attacked.

Micheal said he used to wash cars in Lagos from where he raised the sum of N300,000 with which he traveled to Libya.

“I spent eight years to save the N300,000 I used to travel. In Libya, people were always ‘kalabushing’ each other, that is tracking each other’s boat. I have not entered the boat when I was rescued and brought back. I wanted to jump from a storey building when I fell. They came and saw that I was finished so they left me. It was the UN that came and took me to the hospital.”

Meanwhile, GuardianNG says, Italian prosecutors have begun investigation into the death of 26 teenage Nigerian girls who died in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Italy on Sunday.