(Thursday 12th March 2020 Issue)
Since
migration has become one of the trending issues luring youth in embarking on
such a perilous journey, many youth especially women have had horrible
experiences that they could never forget.
International
Organisation for Migrants (IOM) in partnership with the Women Journalists
Association in recognising International Women’s Day, organised a day workshop
on how to report on migration issues.
The
training brought together 20 female journalists from various media houses.
During
her journey to Nigeria, a Gambian woman (name withheld), a returnee shared her
experience on how she survived on her way with the aim of going to Europe.
“I
needed a better living to help my mother,” she explains. A Nigerian woman came
to her and told her there are many Gambians in Nigeria and “I can help you,”
which she agreed to.
Then,
she said she took the bus from Banjul and went through the ‘backway’. “When we
reached the entrance to Nigeria, our bus was attacked by rebels and some died
and some of us were raped. That is where I lost my virginity.”
From
there, she stayed in Nigeria and got a job where she was selling credit cards,
magazines, and novels. However, a man came to her assistance and enrolled her
in a school where she learned catering.
The
man went on and opened a bank account for her. “The money was huge that I had
to take half of it and sent it to my mum to renovate the house they live in.”
Furthermore,
she stayed at the man’s house with his family and one fateful day the man went
out with his children living the wife and her in the house. Later, the wife
took a knife and threatened her to leave the house.
She
continued that the wife drove her in her car to a bush she didn’t know.
Her
journey, continued with a lady she met around the bush who assisted her.
Meanwhile,
she said from the little savings she had, she helped her brother from The
Gambia to come to Nigeria so she could help him cross over to Libya.
In
Libya she said, her brother was imprisoned three times then she tried to go and
find out what had happened.
She
said they were imprisoned in Libya and a Nigerian man came and bought them.
She
added that the Nigerian told them he bought them with a lot of money and so he
was going to have something in return which is to involve them in prostitution.
The man expressed his feelings to her and then got her pregnant which she later
aborted.
“I
suffered, she said. I met a Senegalese man who asked me to live with him but I
declined and told him you have to marry me before I live with you and that’s
how I married him.”
That
was not the end of it, she said. “I found my husband with another woman in my
matrimonial bed three times but I had a baby boy with him.”
At
this stage, she concluded that she is struggling for her son and not the
husband because he didn’t marry him for love but the conditions she was in.
