The Journey To Nowhere

Poverty-stricken illegal migrants from Nigeria in search of a better future in Europe who end up in Libya, abused and exploited by traffickers. Their horrific accounts.

- Peace Hyde

ON A SULTRY FRIDAY NIGHT, traders frantically arrange clothes and shoes on the ground next to the roundabout on Adetokunbo Ademola street in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.

Yellow tricycles, known locally as Keke Marwa, zip past pedestrians weaving carelessly through the evening traffic, often emitting sickening smoke, in a desperate attempt to offload and pick up passengers.

Across the road, on Sanussi Fafanwa Street, a suya (meat) seller is seasoning raw chicken and goat meat with pepper, before arranging them shabbily on metallic trays ready to be grilled for revelers. Behind him, a row of restaurants and bars emerge from the poorly-lit and dilapidated road where Toyin (not real name) clad in a miniskirt, a crop top and knee-high boots paces seductively, flagging down drivers with the promise of an unforgettable night.

Toyin was only 15 years old when her family was persuaded by a neighbor to send her to her uncle in Europe, away from her poverty-stricken village in Nigeria’s Edo State.

“My mother gave her life savings of N350,000 ($970) to a middleman who promised to smuggle me through Libya to Italy to meet my uncle. I joined a bus of about 30 people and they transported us through the desert for days before we arrived in Libya,” recounts Toyin.

Then the nightmare began.

“In the middle of the night, two of the men came and took me along with two other girls into another room and took turns to rape us. Afterwards, they took us to a separate container and in the morning, we were sold to a brothel where I worked for two years as a prostitute. They raped us to break us down and prepare us for life as a prostitute and if you did not comply, they beat you and let you starve for days to teach you a lesson,” says Toyin.

After falling pregnant, she was sold again and eventually ended up at a detention center in Gharyan, a city in northwestern Libya.