The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri, has warned Nigerians to resist the temptation of traveling to Libya illegally in the hope of getting to Europe via the Libyan route.
The warning is following a video clip as well as pictures that were being circulated on the social media, showing black immigrants who were purportedly killed in Libya.
Dabiri, a former House of Representatives member in the 7th National Assembly, said that though the authenticity of the pictures and video clips could not be verified, “it is a known fact that Libya has been executing alleged black illegal immigrants for years.”
She narrated how, as the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, her committee had intervened in the case of 24 Nigerians about to be killed in Libya.
She recalled that “the Committee, in collaboration with SERAP, an NGO,petitioned the UN, AU (and) ECOWAS (until) Ghadaffi (former Libyan President) yielded to pressure and released them.”
Dabiri added that “as at two months ago, NEMA (National Emergency Management Agency) alongside, the Nigerian Embassy in Libya evacuated over 2000 Nigerians from Libya.”
She also assured that the Nigerian embassy in Libya, in collaboration with NEMA has relentlessly intervened in cases involving Nigerians who are in trouble in Libya and “will continue to do so.”
The Presidential aide noted that Libya as a country is going through a rough period “as there is no recognised government in place.”
She pleaded with “Nigerian migrants to avoid Libya,” adding that the“penalty for illegal migration to Libya, when caught, is usually a death sentence.”
Since the deposition of former Libyan President, Muammar Gaddafi, the country has been thrown into chaos as various terrorist groups control major cities in the country.
The ongoing crisis in Libya has so far resulted in tens of thousands of casualties since the onset of violence in early 2011.
During the crisis, the output of Libya’s economically crucial oil industry collapsed abysmally to a small fraction of its usual level.