A Nigerian woman, Mercy Olugbenga, has shared the shocking story of how she was trapped in Libya and forced to give her blood to her employer’s sick mother while working as a domestic staff.
Mercy, who hails from Kabba in Kogi State, said she dropped out of school in 2018 to care for her ailing mother and later sold family property to fund her mother’s treatment. In search of better opportunities, she was lured to Libya with promises of decent work, only to end up in modern-day slavery.
“My mum was sick. She had a kidney problem. We had to sell all her properties, and there was nothing else. There is no family anywhere,” she told ARISE TV’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.
According to her, she spent four years in Libya. For the first one year and six months, she worked without pay because she had to settle an agent’s fee of about N2.5 million.
“I was maltreated, I changed jobs, and at one point, I was locked up in a house where my blood was drawn without my consent,” she recalled tearfully.
Mercy explained that she had been hired to look after her employer’s mother, but the job soon turned into confinement. “They locked the door before going out. They locked the outside door, they locked the gate door,” she said.
She said nurses came monthly to take her blood, which she initially thought was a medical check-up. “I thought it was their normal routine. But in this case, it is every month, which is not supposed to be so. Later I got to know that they wanted my blood because it matched their mum’s,” she said.
Describing the harsh treatment of Africans in Libya, Mercy added, “What I experienced in Libya, not me alone, other Africans and other illegal migrants, those people they don’t like us. Maybe they see us as rivals, or because they know wherever Nigerians are, they might take over. So they treat us like animals.”
Mercy said her biggest plea is for no other young Nigerian to take the same route. “I don’t want any young girl or boy to go through what I went through. Please don’t follow this route,” she warned.
She also asked for help to return to school, saying she left at 300 Level in 2018 because of her family struggles.
Reacting to her case, Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, described her as “one of the lucky ones,” noting that many Nigerians trapped in Libya had either died in the desert, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, or disappeared without a trace.
“Irregular migration is voluntary suicide,” Dabiri-Erewa warned, urging Nigerian youths to always choose safe and legal means of travel.
She praised President Bola Tinubu’s NELFUND initiative, saying it would give Nigerians like Mercy a chance to complete their education and avoid risky journeys abroad.
Reports from the International Organisation for Migration show that at least 20,197 Nigerians stranded in different countries were voluntarily returned as of March 2025, with women and girls making up almost 88 per cent of them.
