•Nigerian migrants relive tortuous experience in Algerian desert, Libyan prison
•Libyan police starved, flogged us before meal- Survivors
•Tunisian police stole our money, phones, endangered our lives on sea-Couple
Hordes of Nigerian citizens are languishing and dying in North African deserts and prisons following brutal EU externalization policy that empowers the Arab nations and few others to brutalise, and dehumanize fellow Africans for the purpose of preventing them from passing their corridors to Europe. Discussions around the bestial policy partly featured at the 2025 National Migration Dialogue activities in commemoration of the International Migrants Day in Abuja. Unfortunately, some of the victimised migrants left the December 18 National Migration Dialogue more depressed as their perspective was absolutely ignored. The event centred on rhetorics and not on the victims’ perspective. INNOCENT DURU examines the plight of the victims in the report.
Goodluck, a 30-year-old, was full of life when left Nigeria for Libya recently.
He travelled with full hopes of returning to the country better off than he left. Unfortunately, he came back worse off with a broken leg and damaged hand that reduced him to a vegetable.
Prior to his trip to Libya, Goodluck had travelled to Germany in 2016 but got deported six years later. “I was into vocational studies in Germany. On the second to the last day of my exam, their police picked me and took me straight to the Munich Airport back to Nigeria,” Goodluck said, decrying the sad reality he faced on his return.
As an orphan, Goodluck said he nowhere to go to than the house of his married brother who also had huge responsibilities hanging on his neck.
His words: “It was not easy coping. I suffered too much depression. I was admitted three times at the hospital. My BP rose very high at one point. On one occasion I collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. I was thinking too much because the situation was too unbearable for me. I could not cope because I didn’t even know where to start from. As a barber, I tried doing something here under somebody but the more I tried, the more everything pointed to hopelessness.”
In other climes, people like Goodluck are given some psycho-social support to help them shrug off the trauma they had suffered and gradually reintegrated back into the society. But that is not the case here. Deportees are rather mocked and treated with disdain for being failures in their journey abroad.
Disenchanted with the distressing condition he found himself, Goodluck hit the road again and went to Algeria after getting some assistance from some of his friends.
From Algeria, he entered Libya and was doing a menial job.
After some time, Goodluck said: “I went to cross the Mediterranean Sea. We spent three days, on top of the sea.
We even missed our way as we were moving on top of the sea. The waves were too much and some people fell into the sea. We could not rescue them and continued the journey. We didn’t get any rescue for three days on the sea. Subsequently, Libyan Police came. They arrested and took us to the prison.”
Right from the prison, Goodluck reached out to his friends again. “They supported me financially to get bailed. After that I returned to doing menial work again.”
After his bail, Goodluck received a good news that his people had started “my visa processing, and that I should come back to Nigeria.”
Elated by the news, Goodluck decided to come back to Nigeria but it ended in woes for him.
“On my way back to Nigeria, I was arrested by the Libyan Police and was taken to prison. I tried to bail myself but they told me there’s no bail. So, I spent three months and two weeks in prison. Within that period, we tried to escape from the prison because I was seeing people dying every day in the prison. It’s like a normal thing for people to die every day in the prison.”
There in the prison, Goodluck said: “We were not eating good food. We were not even bathing because there was no soap. We couldn’t even brush. Each time they were bringing the food to us, they would first of all beat us before giving us the food. If they did not beat you, you wouldn’t eat. We were being tortured daily.”
Traumatised by the experience in the prison, Goodluck said: “One day, I saw people making plans to escape from the prison.
So, I decided to take the opportunity because I didn’t want to die there.
“When we made the move to escape, the police started shooting at us directly. Thanks to God, the bullet did not touch me, but many died. Unfortunately, when I jumped the fence, I broke my leg. Libyan police came and seeing that I broke my leg, they started beating me. They wanted to flog me with a pipe on my face but I blocked it with my hand. The hand got broken.
They took me back to the prison without any treatment.”
Goodluck heaved a sigh of relief when he heard that Nigerian officials were visiting the prison. He looked forward to getting treated and freed from the pains that had emasculated him. He said: “When the Nigerian embassy officials came, they saw my situation and told me there was nothing they could do for me and that I should just file for deportation. I had no choice, because I was already going back to my country before I was arrested. So, I registered for deportation.”
Goodluck said he remained in the prison for three months before the International Organisation for Migration came and returned him to Nigeria.
“IOM gave me an ATM card with over N300, 000 in it. I told them about my health condition but they said that was my personal problem. After buying a phone and paying for my transport to my state and paying for treatment, the money was exhausted. I am going for native treatment now. I am still too young not to be walking with my legs. People with both legs intact are complaining about life situation, now imagine someone like me in this condition.”
Goodluck’s experience in Libya is a direct result of the European Union’s border externalization policy.
The EU’s border externalization policy outsources stringent migration management and border control practices to African states to restrict people from migrating from their countries of origin to the EU.
Frey Lindsay, an investigative journalist with Statewatch told our correspondent that over the last decade, and “increasingly in recent years, the EU has funneled hundreds of millions of euros at least (by some counts over a billion euros) to countries in North Africa, including Libya, Tunisia and Morocco, under so-called ‘migration partnerships’. In most cases, these projects can best be seen as the EU paying authorities in those countries to act as its external border guards, emboldened to forcibly and often violently intercept and detain people attempting to seek shelter in Europe. The European Commission has largely turned a blind eye to the extreme violence, forced labour, kidnapping, detention, sexual violence, murder and other atrocities committed against African migrants that these funds are complicit in.”
Commenting on the EU policy, Nomzamo Malindisa of the University of Pretoria said in a post on EU Renew Blog Series, said “This has detrimental impacts on African states including on their sovereignty, the human rights of the migrants, and how Africa shows up within the global migration governance landscape. By handing the responsibility of restricting the movement of the people of Africa across African states, the continent bears the criticism of hindering progress on global migration governance and exacerbating the migration crisis along the Africa-EU pathway.”
She added that the “EU’s externalization policy undermines the national sovereignty of African states and negatively affects the continent’s agency within the context of the Africa-EU relationship. The national migration policies and priorities of African states that engage with the EU in this regard are overshadowed by European influence on local migration governance practices, incrementally reducing the states’ control of migratory activities within their own borders.”
Checks revealed that the decision to keep Goodluck and others like him in prison for three months after a visit by the Nigerian authorities is not unconnected with the EU policy which aims to leave indelible scars in the minds of the immigrants that will make them return home and narrate their ordeals to their people.
Also reliving his ordeal, Jerry, who shared the same prison with Goodluck said: “I was in a taxi going hospital for treatment of a discomfort in my stomach when the Libyan police arrested me. They pushed me into a cell and from there, they dumped me in the prison.”
Like Goodluck, Jerry said: “I saw hell in the prison. Many people died in the prison. They were always starving us. It’s five people to a plate of food. The food comes with serious beating. When they come to give the food, they would be shouting hamza, hamza meaning five five, five five. As they are saying that they would be flogging everybody with pipes. I sustained injury but I didn’t allow them to treat me there because if you go to hospital for headache, they will treat you for stomach pain. A friend suffered serious bleeding after getting such treatment.”
Also narrating his experience during the jail break attempt, Jerry said: “Police were shooting people when we tried to escape that night. We targeted the time they would bring food and outside. . They started shooting without breaking. I tried escaping and they caught me. They made me lie down and flogged me seriously and pushed me back inside the prison.”
When he came back to Nigeria with the assistance of IOM, Jerry said he was given an ATM with N400, 000. “It was that money that I used to treat myself. They told us that after three months they will call us for an interview. After three months, they invited us to Abeokuta in Ogun State and gave us one book on business idea and also trained us. We spent about a week in the hotel. They promised to give us some money later and asked us to drop our account details. Since then, I haven’t heard from them. I told them I am a furniture maker. They taught me how I can make money in my business and how I can relate very well with customers. They said IOM was going to surprise us. They have not given us any money since then.”
Nigerian migrants, others left to die in desert
In other North African countries like Tunisia, the EU border policy is carried with to the letters. People, including children, nursing and expectant mothers are dumped in hash conditions in the Algerian desert without water and food. It was learnt that many migrants die in the process of thirst and hunger.
Richie, 34, shared his brutal experience in the hands of the authorities.
Like Goodluck, Richie had traveled to Germany in 2018 for greener pastures but got deported in 2022.
“Life was very difficult for me when I came back. I was depressed,” he said.
With no support from anywhere, Richie found it difficult to move on. “At this point, it’s a very different lifestyle for me, you know. Living in an advanced country, all of a sudden, coming back to Nigeria with no means of survival. I have a sick mom that I have to take care of. My family was my responsibility when I was in Germany. I gave them money for medication, feeding and all those things. Following my deportation, they were now the ones feeding me. It wasn’t easy for them also. I didn’t even know my mom was taking loans from different meetings and all that to support me. I didn’t know how to fight it.”
Frustrated by the situation he found himself, Richie moved to return to Europe again.
“A friend who travelled to Europe from Morocco, and Tunisia, who advised me to hit the road again, but this time not through Libya, I should use Tunisia. From Tunisia, we tried to cross several times, but it was not successful because of the border control.”
On the fourth attempt, Richie said they were already on the sea for six hours when security operatives caught them.
“They deported all of us to the desert in Algeria and told us to find our way and not to come back to Tunisia again. We had nothing on us; no food, no water and no money. They just dumped us there in the desert.”
Unfortunately for Richie, he was no longer single at that point. He had had a child from a lady he met in the course of the journey.
“All of us, my woman, my baby and I were dumped in the desert, he said, adding: “We trekked for more than one week in the desert. We slept in the desert at night and in the morning, we continued trekking again.”
Whenever they lacked water or food, Richie and his wife would go out to the road and beg commuters for help.
“Some of them will throw water to us. Some of them will stop and give us bread and juice. But they would not carry us in their vehicle. I think it’s the law their government gave them.”
Richie noted that the experience in Algeria was very terrible especially because of the sun. “You don’t have any shaded place to hide your head. Even if it’s raining, it has to rain on you.”
Continuing, he said: “There were so many other Africans inside the Algerian desert. When they deported us from Algeria to Niger, we were more than one million people. You see this long truck used to carry cows was more than 30 loaded with people. Each one of us sat chained with legs wide open. Another person sits in-between like that like that. People who didn’t want to face that deportation were jumping out while that vehicle was on high speed. When they fell down, they couldn’t get up again. Most of them broke their legs. They still captured them and put them inside the trucks and still deported them. They were doing that deportation from Algeria every three days.”
The long journey from Algeria terminated at Assamaka in Niger Republic. The place has been a dumping ground for migrants forcefully removed from Libya, Tunisia and other places. It’s a land of hardship and deprivation.
“Assamaka was another story entirely,” Richie said. “Because the IOM is there in Asamaka, we went there to register to get some aid and support. But the process was something else. Weather in Assamaka was very hot. I figured it was not okay for my baby because he was just being sick, vomiting and all those things.
“Tunisian police took our phone, took our money. So, when we got to Assamaka, we were not having phone. Then I said, okay, my wife and the baby should go home because of the sake of the baby. And I remained for a while. She left with the financial support we got from her people and my friends. I later got money and left too.”
Also recounting her ordeal, Richie’s wife said: “My husband and I met in Algeria. Arab men used to harass women. One was even telling me that I should sleep with him.
He showed me a knife and demonstrated that he was going to cut my neck.
“We stayed in Algeria for, I think, a week and a half not going out. We were just inside. We had a burger. He would come and check on us. Then we would give him money to buy food for us.”
After sometime in Algeria, she said they left for Tunisia by road.
Decrying the hostility of the Arabs, she said: “Tunisia and Algeria are the same thing.
Their people treated black people like trash. While I was in labour, we went to a hospital but no one attended to us. We were asked to go to another one with the pain I was feeling because we are blacks. I gave birth in a hospital but they didn’t give me normal treatment. They did not want us to stay with their people because we are blacks. They kept me where blacks were.”
Reliving her experience in the desert, she said: “It was hell walking inside the desert. My baby was just sucking only breast and I wasn’t eating well. It was God that said that, that baby is going to live. I was mostly eating debino (dates). Their people were giving us debino. That was what we were just feeding on. We fetched salty water from the farms to quench our thirst. It’s not clean. Rain was beating us, including my son in the desert. When it rains, we would be under the tree; nowhere to hide. It is the same when the sun shines. The weather was always dry and hot.”
Corroborating her husband, she said: “The Tunisian police used to steal from us. They stole our phone, and money. When we were in a boat to cross, they police arrested us, they collected the engine. They later collected our phone. They left us on the boat like on the sea. It was another boat that threw rope to us to pull us out. Before then I was scared because I was actually pregnant at that time. The trauma was too much. I don’t want to go through it again.”
Victims shut out of IMD
During the December International Migration Day celebration, Bright, a deportee, who attended the event with high hopes left a sad man. He told our correspondent how he was harassed and almost prevented from entering the venue.
“One of the officials rudely told me that the event was not meant for us. She said it was for important dignitaries like government officials and development partners. She went on to tell me that they would invite us to share our experience when there is an opportunity for such event.”
Ruffled by the remark, Bright lost his vivaciousness and wore a mournful look throughout the event meant to celebrate people like him.
When contacted, Rex Osa, who had mobilised and financed deported migrants from Rivers and Edo states to participate in Abuja CSF and National Migration Dialogue expressed disappointment in the NCFMRI, calling it a primitive act to have ignored the highly sensitive perspective of migrants in the event program. “In fact the so-called national dialogue was more of a loyalty show for international donors with arrogant display of their clusters of logo as more also an unmerited and uncalled for profiling of public office holders some of who should be held responsible for the problem that has continued to cause many young people to flee the country.”
International, local NGOs criticize EU policy
Numerous NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Human Rights Watch, Refugee Rights Europe, and local groups in North Africa, strongly criticize EU border externalization for its role in deadly journeys, pushbacks, human rights abuses in third countries (like Libya), and shifting crises to vulnerable nations, effectively outsourcing border control at the cost of human lives and dignity. They advocate for urgent review of agreements and accountability for officials involved in these harmful policies.
Criticisms of the border externalisation policies, primarily from human rights organizations and legal scholars, center on severe human rights violations, a lack of accountability and transparency, the empowerment of authoritarian regimes, and the overall ineffectiveness of the approach.
Human Rights Violations and Legal Concerns
· Exposure to Abuses: Externalisation agreements with countries like Libya, Turkey, and Mauritania expose migrants and asylum seekers to systemic and severe human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, forced labor, extortion, and trafficking by state authorities, militias, and armed groups.
· Violation of Non-Refoulement: Policies often result in “pushbacks” and deportations without individual assessments, violating the international legal principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning individuals to countries where they would face persecution or danger.
· Dangerous Routes and Deaths: By closing traditional routes, externalisation forces migrants to use more dangerous pathways, leading to an increase in deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean Sea. The violence faced by migrants is seen not as an accident, but as a consequence of a system designed around deterrence.
· Gendered and Racialized Violence: The policies disproportionately affect vulnerable groups, with evidence of increased risks of sexual violence and exploitation for women and girls, and a general “gendered racialization” that subjects certain groups to heightened violence.
· Lack of Accountability and Transparency
· Accountability Gaps: The “distance-creation” through externalisation makes it difficult to attribute legal responsibility for violations to the EU or its Member States, creating significant accountability deficits.
· Informal Agreements: Many deals, such as the EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding, are informal and non-binding, allowing them to bypass democratic scrutiny and legal safeguards, including the need for parliamentary consent.
· Insufficient Monitoring: Critics point to a lack of independent monitoring mechanisms and human rights safeguards within these agreements, which contributes to the impunity of abusive practices.
· Frontex Criticism: The EU’s border agency, Frontex, has been heavily criticized by organizations like Human Rights Watch for failing to safeguard people against human rights violations and for its alleged involvement in illegal pushbacks.
· Political and Geopolitical Consequences
· Empowering Autocratic Regimes: The EU has been criticized for financially backing and partnering with countries that have questionable human rights records or are led by undemocratic actors, which can entrench authoritarian governance and compromise the EU’s own stated values.
· Instrumentalization and Blackmail: Partner countries have gained significant leverage, using the control of migration as a bargaining chip to extort more funds or political concessions from the EU, as seen with Turkey and Tunisia.
· Undermining Long-Term Stability: The focus on short-term border control often comes at the cost of addressing the root causes of migration (such as poverty, conflict, and climate change) and can destabilize partner countries, potentially leading to further migratory pressures.
Ineffectiveness
· Failure to Stop Migration: Despite the goal of reducing irregular migration, evidence suggests that externalisation policies often fail to produce sustainable solutions and can have counterproductive, unintended consequences, such as forcing migrants into the hands of more ruthless smuggling and trafficking networks.
· Fueling Smuggling Networks: The restriction of legal pathways, without addressing the demand for migration, has inadvertently fueled the growth of sophisticated and violent human smuggling and trafficking industries.
