Nigerian Libya returnees are federal government, families’ responsibility

Nigerian Libyan returnees are currently in a state of flux. Living in torturous conditions in the north African country which gained global infamy for its festering human trafficking and slave trade, they were brought to Nigeria with their futures blurry.

Some of the returnees who are of Edo State origin a few days ago protested against an alleged failure of the government to fulfil its promises shortly after they returned.

Whose responsibility are the returnees anyway? Respondents to a poll on The Guardian website between Wednesday, January 10 and Thursday, January 11 said they should be taken care of by the federal government and their families.

Forty-seven percent of the 987 respondents said the federal government should see to their welfare while only forty-two percents insisted that should be done by the families of the returnees.

Eleven percent of the respondents said the returnees are the responsibilities of their respective state governments.

What is certain, however, is that the returnees are dire need of rehabilitation considering the fact that some of them were held in slave and sex camps where they endured inhuman treatment.

“In recent months the odious and perverse consequences of human trafficking and irregular migration were forcefully brought to our television screens with gory tales,” Julie Okah-Donli, the director-general of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons(NAPTIP) told the Nigerian Senate on December 20, 2017.