THE Afriqiyah airbus showed patches of grey light as it made for descent at the Cargo wing of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos on Tuesday, December 7. Seated in the plane were 245 young Nigerians returning home after a tortuous migrant journey that led them into prison cells where they were auctioned as slaves. As they began to alight from the plane, many of them burst into songs of jubilation, kneeling to thank God for saving them from deadly encounters. Among the returnees were some young women clutching babies.
They were the ones who combined the tortuous reality of life in a migrant cell with birthing and nursing infants. One of them was Glory Osas, who in a seeming effort to disguise her pain, felicitously named her baby Happy. “I named him Happy because of what I suffered in the prison in Libya. There was no naming ceremony, I just gave him that name”, she said with a blank countenance. Her forehead was covered with sweat even though she was seated in an open-air space. Her hair, plaited in three corn rows, had become locked from months of neglect. She ran her hands through the lines of hre hair, as if trying to loosen the knotted ends. For the 26- year- old, she began to dream of life in Europe the time she started working as a hairdresser in Benin.
She was pregnant when she left Nigeria last year to make the journey through the Sahara Desert to Libya. Asked what emboldened her resolve to travel through the desert with a pregnancy, she barricaded the question and also chose to keep mute over the paternity of her child. Rather, she chose to dwell on the agony she experienced while nursing her eight-month-old son in a Libya prison where she spent nine months after she was caught by Arab policemen trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy on February 23rd, 2017. “I was injured by the prison warden three days after I gave birth to my son. We were beaten like animals, there was no dignity for me in pregnancy.” If her treatment in prison as a pregnant woman bore fatal remembrance, what she encountered after the birth of her child was more heart wrenching.
“There was no baby wear or maternity product. I had to remove my shirt to cover my baby when he was born. I used the blankets given to us in the prison to wrap him for some warmth. I cut towels and nylons into pieces and stitched them together to serve as diapers.” With the improvised diapers, it didn’t come as a surprise that the baby would later develop rashes in his private part. With her post-partum ordeal in the migrant cell, Glory’s posture lacked any glory or grace. She stared into the void like one who had lost faith in life. Asked of her plans for the future, she said; “I don’t know what the future holds for me. 26 people died in the Hilux vehicle that was used to transport us through the desert to Libya. Only God saved me.”
Love beyond the confines of religion
Sonia Alli beckoned to the reporter from where she sat cuddling a two month old baby. Carrying a white attachment which stood distinctly from the dark patches of her hair, she was easily noticeable from the crowd. Her 23-year-old body bore the insignia of a postpartum travail. As she made to breastfeed the baby girl she named Fatima, one could see dry patches on the skin of her breast. She certainly had to battle skin infection in a prison where access to clean water was rationed. She said: “I didn’t let the doctor in the prison take my delivery. I was afraid of being cut because the Arab doctor in our prison does not give much time for labour. They just make arrangement for a caesarean section once one is not able to push out the baby in a short time.
I didn’t want to go through nursing a cut after childbirth in prison, so I planned with some other girls to deliver the baby without medical supervision.” She added that she could not get hot water to dab her bulging stomach, and It was not until she got to the deportation camp that the baby got immunized. Sonia, who dropped out of a public secondary school in Edo State to chase the golden fleece, added that she named her baby Fatima because the man who bailed her out from prostitution in Libya, whom she later lived with, is a Muslim while she is a Christian. An economic migrant, Sonia got pregnant in Libya after she met a 29-year-old bloke who paid N800,000 to secure her freedom from a prostitution ring. Like many female migrants, her ‘benefactor’ offered to sponsor her trip to Europe with the promise that she would pay back when she starts working as a house help in Italy.
She said: “We had an accident in the desert and my ‘madam’ changed her mind. She commanded me to stay in Libya and hustle (prostitute) to pay back her money. But I met my daughter’s father and he agreed to pay her. We lived together for one year but we were separated on May 23rd this year. We were raided by Arab men while trying to cross the sea to Europe”.
Separated and taken to different prisons, Sonia was unable to raise the N500,000 demanded by her abductors. She spent 8 months in prison before she was got helped to a deportation camp where she met officials of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and agreed to a voluntary repatriation.
Although she has not heard from her baby’s daddy since the month May, Sonia said she had refused to worry about the future. She also refused to accept the fact that he might have died.
“I told him my address in Edo state. We are from the same place and I know he would come look for me. We agreed that should I bear a girl; her name would be Fatima.” Asked how she hopes to cope with the responsibility of raising a daughter, she replied: “I will try my best”.
Learning the hard way
Faith Imade, 20, walked through the shadow of death in February this year when the boat she was travelling in capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 26 other migrants. Already pregnant, she was rescued by fishermen and thereafter taken to a prison. Her 27-year-old beau was taken to a separate prison and he later bailed himself with a ransom and succeeded in crossing the sea to France.
At the time, she spoke with The Nation in the dead of the night, her one -month-old infant still looked reddish with blood.
She said: “I spent 10 months in prison. It was a terrible experience. The man there usually beat us. Sometimes we spend 2 days without food and water. There was no medical care. I didn’t attend any ante-natal clinic. I only survived the pregnancy with the help of God.
Imade had left Edo State with a man who promised to take her to Italy to earn foreign currency by braiding hair for women. She gave birth to her child in prison and named him Wisdom because that was the name that came to her mind.
Although she still keeps in touch with the father of her child through the phone, she said she was not nursing the hope of returning to join him in Europe should he request for her to come.
“For now, I want to stay in Nigeria. I don’t want to travel again,” she said firmly.
From Ibadan to Sahara Desert
Motunrayo Ademola devoured her plate of jollof rice as if her life depended on it. She proceeded to break the chicken bone which she dangled with relish, pleading with the reporter to exercise patience while she ate.
“When was the last time I ate Jollof rice? Eleda mi modupe (my Creator I am grateful)”.
Her warmness was remarkable as she joked through recalling the tales of her sordid encounter as a pregnant woman in a migrant prison. In an instant, she appeared to have forgotten all there was to the struggles she experienced as she held on to her cute baby while exchanging giggles with her three-year-old daughter.
With a gaunt that accentuated her tribal marks, it was hard to believe that she was the mother of a chubby one month old infant. Another beautiful daughter was tugging by her cardigan while the chat lasted.
“I am from Ibadan,”, she said in a charmed tone. I went to Libya last December because I wanted to join my husband to cross to Italy. He has been in Libya since 2013. We got to the seaside and we were raided. My husband was taken to another prison and I haven’t’ heard from him since November”.
According to her, she was able to cope with the pregnancy in prison through the help of another woman who sometimes gave up her ration of food for her so she could feed properly. She was also lucky to have stayed in a prison where an Arab woman distributed clothes and diapers to nursing mothers whenever she visits the prison.
“My baby is one month old today, and I haven’t dabbed him with hot water. I have not treated his navel and the baby cries as a result of stomach upset. My tummy is still bloated because I couldn’t get access to clean hot water,” she further lamented.
Her beautiful daughter giggled through the conversation. As if sensing the mind of the reporter on how the baby made it through the desert, she said: “I carried her on my arms. She used to be beautiful, but prison life has changed her complexion”.
Migrants voluntarily return home
Many migrants caught in prisons in Libya have taken on the offer of voluntary return offered by the IOM and the European Union. Over 2000 migrants have been returned home so far, consisting mostly of young people and infant.
Mrs Bose Aggrey, the founder of the Web of Heart Foundation, an NGO with a migrant reintegration centre in Ibeju-Lekki told The Nation that many of the returnees are economic migrants who have been traumatized. She added that most times, they are prone to health challenges and urged Nigerians to provide support for organizations working on the reintegration of migrants into the society.
The Southwest coordinator of NEMA, Mr Suleiman Yakubu, added that migrants have been voluntarily assisted back home after failed attempt to cross into Europe through Libya by the IOM through funding from the European Union. He called on other state government to emulate the government of Edo State, which is always present to receive migrants at the airports whilst also helping with their reintegration into their home state.
Reporting done as part of 2017 BudgIT media fellowship
