By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS, Nigeria (AA) – Some 141 Nigerian migrants from Libya — 11 of them pregnant women — voluntarily returned to Nigeria late Tuesday, an official said on Wednesday amid continued concerns about the safety of migrants in the war-torn North African country.
Official Nigerian news agency NAN quoted Segun Afolayan, an official of the country's relief agency, saying that the migrants offered to return on their own and were assisted by the International Migration Organization (IOM) and the European Union.
“After profiling, we have 71 female adults, three female children and three female infants. Also, there were 53 male adults, six male children and five male infants; among them were two medical cases and 11 pregnant women,” Afolayan was quoted as saying.
The official said most of the returnees were living in the Libyan capital, which has been caught in turmoil since 2011, when a bloody NATO-backed uprising led to the ouster and death of long-serving President Muammar Gaddafi.
Since then, Libya’s stark political divisions have yielded two rival seats of power — one in Tobruk and another in Tripoli — and a host of heavily armed militia groups.
Tens of thousands of Nigerians were living in the north African country until the crisis — some of them using Tripoli as a transit to Europe through a tortuous and often deadly journey on the Mediterranean Sea.
This July a video of some Nigerians and other Africans trapped in a slave camp in Libya triggered government effort to repatriate its nationals. Thousands of Nigerians have since been brought home with the support of the IOM.
