TheCable

A total of 171 Nigerians, comprising 95 females, including 12 girls, and 76 males, returned to the country from Libya on Tuesday.

They are currently at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, where they are being attended to by officials of Nigeria Immigration Service, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), and some other agencies.

The plane, which conveyed them from the North African country, landed around 4:15pm.

Last week, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, senior special assistant to the president on foreign affairs and diaspora, had said 180 Nigerians were being expected.

Three-hundred and- fourteen Nigerians have been forced to return to the country within two weeks, as a result of the harrowing experience in Libya.

Gift Peters, one of the returnees, had told reporters that she was deceived of being taken to Germany.

“When I got to Libya, it was not in my mind to continue with the journey. So I asked the person that took me to return me to Nigeria but he started maltreating me and sold me to someone who has a connection house in Libya where we were maltreated daily,” she had said.

Immigration officials documenting them

“If we don’t want to work, they will start maltreating us. They will do something to you that you will wish to die.

“Those who they sold us to, sometimes, use iron and start burning us. At times, they will instruct our fellow ladies to urinate for us to drink.”

She said she eventually contacted her family in Nigeria and was fortunate to make it back alive, unlike many of her peers who joined her on the ill-fated journey.