Victory Imasuen,
the Nigerian slavery victim whose story on CNN sparked a global outcry about
human trafficking in Libya, has given a vivid account of how he left the country
and his friends’ ordeals in Libya.
The Edo State indigene,
whose emotion-laden interview with CNN’s Nima Elbagir in a Libyan deportation
camp was viewed by millions worldwide, shared his life-experiences in T.B.
Joshua’s church on Sunday 3rd December, 2017.
The young barber
explained that his father died when he was just eleven, adding that he
struggled to sponsor himself through school along with his five siblings.
“When I was
cutting the hair of one of my customer’s, he advised me to go to Europe where
he promised I could earn a lot of money,” Victory recounted.
“I asked the man
how much it would cost me. He said N350,000 but I said I only had N140,000 with
me.” Victory had determined to be saving N10,000 monthly for over one year
before this deal arose.
The man promised
to ‘help’, not knowing that Victory was naively about to use his own
hard-earned cash to sell himself into slavery.
Travelling by
road on a tortuous journey through Niger, the young Nigerian explained how one
of the vehicles in his convoy had a “terrible accident” in the Sahara Desert,
killing 30 people instantly.
“Upon arriving
in Libya, the driver said he had not been paid his money and we were sold into
the slave trade in Sabha.”
Victory said he
and ten other Nigerians were ‘sold’ and then “locked up in one small room”.
More than 200 slaves were kept inside that inhumane cell.
“They started
beating me to call my mother to send money. That was when my mother learned I
was not in Nigeria - because I did not tell her before I left,” Victory
admitted.
The ransom they
demanded - N200,000 - was simply too much for Victory’s poverty-stricken mother
to raise.
“For months, I
did not hear from her. They kept on beating me every day and I fell sick. If I
went to the toilet, I was shitting (sic) blood.”
Victory was
beaten three times daily for eight grueling months. That was his fate as a
male.
For the ladies
sold into slavery, “they would send them out to do prostitution before selling
them to another person; I know of a girl there who was sold three times.”
According to
him, most of the enslaved females fell pregnant “without even knowing the
father of the child.”
When a picture
of Victory’s emaciated condition was circulated in his local community, they
managed to come together to raise the money to secure his freedom in March
2017.
After gaining
his freedom, Victory attempted to travel to Tripoli, hoping to join the
thousands of illegal migrants who would brave the sea to try and reach Italy by
boat.
“I didn’t even
get to Tripoli before I was caught and taken to prison. I met more than 10,000
Nigerians there. We only eat once a day there - one piece of bread. I would
drink salt water.”
While suffering
the horrific prison conditions, Victory hatched a plan to reach the deportation
camp.
He slipped a
note into the female section of the prison, pleading that any of the ladies who
was being taken for deportation claim he was their husband.
The ruse worked
and Victory was taken to Tripoli’s main deportation camp - one step closer to
being repatriated to Nigeria.
It was there
Victory granted an interview to CNN. “I decided to speak to them, hoping to get
help but at the end, nothing came out of it,” he bemoaned.
Through the
intervention of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Victory was
finally deported to Nigeria - with nothing but the clothes on his back to show
for his “journey through hell”.
“Upon getting to
Nigeria, I decided to come to T.B. Joshua because even before I left, I heard
of the help he renders to others. I need prayer.”
Osazee Aghimie,
another deportee, equally shared his own sorrowful tale, explaining how over
100 migrants died in the boat he was in after it capsized en route to Italy. He
narrowly survived only to be thrown into prison and eventually deported.
T.B. Joshua, who
had just turned from the Dominican Republic, gave the two men each N200,000.
Victory could not hold back tears as he received the gift.
Joshua’s support
to the duo is not an isolated instance. This week alone, the cleric gave over N4.4m
to Nigerians returning from Libya, and well over N100m ($277,000) has been
provided to them by The SCOAN since 2016.
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