Nigerian Trapped In Libya Wants To Come Home

Thousands of migrant workers from an array of African countries, have been caught in the cross hairs of Libya’s revolution. Their plight highlights the perils many confront in often-desperate quest for decent-paying work and the hope of a better life.

Bright Ighodero said only God and luck saved him when a rocket from Moammar Gadhafi’s forces exploded into a Nigerian family he was chatting with as roughly 1,000 migrant workers waited to be evacuated this week from the besieged rebel port of Misrata in western Libya.

“They killed the whole family, except for the father. The mother, her sister, two children, maybe one year and two years old and her husband’s friend, they all were killed,” he said yesterday after he docked safely in Benghazi, the rebel-held bastion in northeast Libya.

He held his head in his hands to fend off a reporter’s questions, as if remembering was too painful.

“I’ve been running to save my head for three months. Running from soldiers, running from rockets. My head is messed up,” said the 30-year old welder from Benin City in South West Nigeria.

“I just want to go home. My mother doesn’t even know I’m alive.”

“Home” is an aluminium sheet hovel overcrowded by his mother and four brothers, with a dirt porch from which they sell rice and canned fish.

They never starved, Ighodero said, but it was a constant struggle to find money to pay school fees for younger siblings or buy a pair of sneakers. “I knew I didn’t want to struggle like that all my life.”

He saved for three years to escape “that life with no future,” putting together the N35,000 ($225) for transport and smugglers’ fees to get him across borders, plus another N20,000 to start a new life.

A ride on the back of trucks across Nigeria and then days on foot slogging through the Sahara Desert of Niger — two young men who collapsed were left to die — brought him to Libya just over a year ago.

Ighodero said he was penniless by the time he got to Misrata, fleeced by smugglers and soldiers at checkpoints.

But he soon made contact with other migrants from Benin City who helped him set up a small business where he was making up to $300 a month — four times his biggest take in Nigeria and by living frugally in a house rented with fellow Nigerians, Ighodero said he was able to send most of his earnings home for his brother to bank.

“I was hoping to make enough to build a proper house with bricks, maybe even to pay for a bride,” he said.

But those dreams were smashed when the uprising to topple Gadhafi, Libya’s ruler for 42 years, reached Misrata. The port city now is held by the rebels but suffers daily bombardments from Gadhafi’s troops, who have turned multiple rocket launch systems usually used against aircraft on the population.

“They were throwing bombs everywhere. We had to run. We have been running for nearly three months to save our heads. Can you imagine that?” Ighodero asked.

He said he and fellow Nigerians were terrified that they would be mistaken for black African mercenaries hired by the Gadhafi regime, some of whom were targeted by lynch mobs.