According to a report by the Punch on Saturday, July 12, 2025, after months of pain, loss, and survival in unimaginable conditions, Victoria Abosede, a 28-year-old mother of two from Osun State, has come home with a story of betrayal, hardship, and deep regret. She recounts how a journey she hoped would lead to a better future ended in trauma, prison, and deportation.
Her decision to leave Nigeria was born out of grief and desperation. After separating from her husband, who neglected their children, Victoria lost one of her daughters to illness. Grieving and financially strained, she was lured by the promise of good pay abroad. An agent—introduced by her aunt—told her Libya offered lucrative domestic work.
But the journey that began on January 12, 2024, was nothing like what she imagined. For over a month, she and other migrants were packed like cargo in the back of trucks, facing death, hunger, and exhaustion. In the desert between Niger and Libya, they survived on dry garri and drank from petrol containers. At one point, she shared muddy puddles with camels and donkeys to stay alive.
On reaching Libya, Victoria was treated for illnesses and injected with unknown drugs before being assigned to a domestic job. What followed were months of forced labor in three different Arab homes. She endured verbal abuse, sleep deprivation, and starvation. Promised a simple cleaning job, she found herself working from 9 a.m. till 2 a.m. daily—cleaning, washing, and also caring for children she wasn’t hired to tend.
Her agent, who collected her wages, constantly threatened to sell her to another handler if she complained. She managed to endure, nearly completing her debt payments, when police arrested her for lacking a passport. Transferred between holding stations and finally imprisoned in Tripoli, she spent over four months in overcrowded, inhumane cells.
Inside the prison, she described horrifying conditions—barely any food or water, pregnant women unattended, sick inmates ignored, and children dying. She was never given legal aid or contact with Nigerian authorities. Though the embassy visited, they provided no food, medical help, or clothing. Only the International Organisation for Migration occasionally delivered basics like soap and sanitary pads.
Victoria finally registered for deportation in February 2025 and was released on March 18, arriving in Lagos alongside over 150 other Nigerians.
She said; “I was released from prison on March 18, 2025; the same day we were brought back to Nigeria.”
