The Federal Government said it is set to repatriate 116 of the Nigerian migrants trapped in Libya slave camps.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, made the disclosure, in a statement by her media aide, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, in Abuja.
She said the federal government and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) have located the detention camps of the Nigerians, and offered to bring those willing back home.
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The Nigeria Mission in Tripoli, she said, had traced the migrants to Osama Detention Centre, Zawiya, Libya.
She said 116 Nigerian migrants have been processed online by the Nigeria Mission and IOM for repatriation back to Nigeria. However, 24 of them insisted they must get to Europe.
She said federal government moved to rescue the detained migrants after their plea for assistance through video clip from Libya on July 8.
In the video, the stranded Nigerians, who veiled their faces, said their final destination was Europe, but were intercepted by the security agencies in Libya and locked up in dehumanising conditions.
The migrants had, in the video, said they were being tortured to death daily under a dehumanising condition.
” We’re dying here. Come and rescue us. Europe is our final destination, but we are trapped in Libya and subjected to inhuman treatment,” one of the Nigerians said in the video.
Dabiri-Erewa said 9,438 Nigerian migrants had, so far, been repatriated by the federal government and the IOM.
She gave assurance that President Muhammadu Buhari would continue to ensure that all stranded migrants willing to return home are brought back.
President Buhari, early this year, directed immediate evacuation of Nigerians from Libya.
She said those who have been brought back are being profiled and enrolled in various technical and vocational training centres with relevant agencies and NGOs.
