The quest for greener pastures in the Middle East countries has left many Nigerian migrants, mostly females, worse off than they were before they left the country. Many of them have been sexually assaulted, put in prison on trumped up charges and visited with cruel treatments their employers would not give to beasts. Kafala, a system that gives employers absolute powers over the migrants in parts of the region is compounded by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic which made it impossible for many of them to be paid for the period they slaved for their bosses, INNOCENT DURU reports.

• Cruel Kafala system, Covid-19 pandemic expose migrants to inhuman treatment

• Maimed, sexually assaulted victims frustrated, commit suicide

Jummy, a graduate of Computer Science, had heaved a sigh of relief after struggling to complete her university education. “It is time to reap the fruits of my labour”, she said to herself in the hope that she would soon secure a good job.

Her dream of bidding poverty and misery farewell saw a glimmer of hope shortly after she completed the compulsory one year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.

“Immediately I completed my NYSC, I met a man who asked if I was interested in travelling to Saudi Arabia. He promised that I was not going there to work as a housemaid,” she said.

Jummy said to convince her that a white collar job awaited her in Dubai, “he told me to go with my credentials; that the moment I got there, I would see a woman that would help me secure a job.

“I invested all the money I saved during my NYSC into the travelling project. I also paid the man, but unfortunately, I no longer know his whereabouts. He has not even chatted with me once since I came here.”

Getting to Dubai full of hopes, she said: “When I met the woman here in Saudi Arabia, I gave her my credentials, telling her that I was told she would help me get a job. But to my chagrin, she said I was here to work as a housemaid.

“I started crying, telling her that I am a graduate and that I had been promised a better job.

“When I told her that I wanted to return to Nigeria, she said that would be on the condition that I paid her the money she paid to the agent, which, according to her, was more than a million naira.

“Before I travelled, they told me not to tell my family members about it because they could scuttle the plans spiritually.

“I ended up signing two-year contract as a housemaid. Throughout the two years, I didn’t go anywhere; not even outside. They made us to wear uniforms like prisoners instead of our normal clothes. I was made to work all day.

“If they see one sitting down, they will be angry. The salary they are paying is about N70,000.

“At a point, my boss started giving me problems I could not bear. She started dropping broken cups for me to wash. And when I complained about it, she said I was there as a housemaid and that I had been sold to her.

“When one of the broken cups cut my hand and blood started gushing out, she complained that my blood was smelling. I was subsequently locked up in one room where I ate and did everything.”

But she said she was not alone in her ordeal.

“There are a lot of our people here that are mentally sick. If they return to Nigeria, they must first go for treatment or they will suffer mental problems,” she said.

She said: “I got to Lebanon on August 28, 2019. Two days after I arrived there, I was taken to the hospital to take an injection. Two days after taking the injection, my hand got swollen, causing my employer to reject me.

“I was subsequently taken back to the office of my agent who took me to another employer where I was asked to work from 6 am to 12 am. Following the heavy workload, I fainted on the third day. Thereafter, my agent took me to a place where I underwent training for a week.”

She recalled that after the training, she was taken to another house where she spent about five weeks.

She said: “In that house, there was no food for me. I was not allowed to use phone, and I was to clean the house, work as a gateman, wash the cars and baby sit, among other tasks.

“My agent got annoyed when I told her I couldn’t continue with the work, because I was looking like a skeleton and already having a lot of odour all over my body.

“She subsequently decided to take me to another house where I was to spend another one month for training, but I declined and told her I wanted  to go back home. She got angry, beat the hell out of me and refused to feed me for two days.”

The agent, Rayo said, eventually took her to another house that was another hell for her.

“There, I cleaned three rooms, three toilets, two big sitting rooms, a big compound and many more every day. The work load affected me seriously, causing me to menstruate for more than six months without stopping.

“With the help of God, Ms Omotola Fawunmi and the Oyo State Government, I returned home on July 11.”

But Rayo’s return did not necessarily spell an end to her troubles.

She said: “Life has not been what we expected it to be when we were coming home. We didn’t come back with any money so survival has been pretty difficult.

“Before I travelled, I was working as a secretary in a hotel. After completing my education, I went into teaching before meeting the owner of the hotel where I was eventually employed.

“It was along the line that I met the agent that said I should travel to Dubai. He assured that I would be paid N120,000 monthly in Dubai. The agent is a brother to my classmate in the secondary school.

“She introduced me to him and because the offer was coming through her, I was convinced that it would not be a scam. It was when I got to the airport that I realised that it was Lebanon that I was going to, and because I had invested a lot of money in the journey, I could not turn back at the airport.”

After all she suffered in Lebanon, Rayo said she only received salaries for five months of the 11 months she worked.

“I was paid N68,000 monthly. The few months’ salaries I received were used to pay back the money I borrowed before I travelled. They could not pay the outstanding salaries because they could not afford to.”

Another migrant who shared her ordeal with The Nation was Sola, a practising nurse who quit her nursing job in mid 2019 to seek greener pastures in Lebanon.

“I am working as a maid here (Lebanon) and have suffered a lot. But I thank God I am still alive,” she said as she recounted her ordeal in the hands of her madam.

“I have been working without getting any salary and basic care from my madam, who also beats me up each time I ask her about my salary. She hits me with anything she finds around her. She pushed me one day and I hit my chest badly against the wall and fell down the staircase.

“I wash all the rooms every day and take care of the baby without a chance to rest at all.”

Asked how she got to Lebanon, she said: “It was someone I used to treat as a nurse that facilitated my coming here. I was always telling her that I wished to have a shop to start my own business, but she said I should try and go to Lebanon and that all I would do was to take care of the house.

“Unfortunately I found myself in slavery when I got here. She asked for N250,000 but I have only paid N150,000. The last time I paid her was December last year.

“She is still asking me to send money but my parents said I should not because of the suffering I am undergoing here.

“I have run out of the house when I saw that those people could kill me one day. I ran to the embassy.”

Abbey, who recently returned from Lebanon, said the person she worked for did not pay her any salary. She said: “I went there in March this year. It was Governor Makinde that paid for us to come home. I paid N100,000 to the agent here to travel. When our bosses couldn’t pay and we were complaining, they went and dropped us by a bush.

“We were nine in number. We stayed in the bush for a week before we found our ways to the embassy. It was some of us who had money that were buying food for us.

“The Nigerian Embassy rented an apartment for us but they were not giving us food. We were collecting money from our parents back home to survive.

“I was supposed to be paid $200 a month but I didn’t get a dime as salary all through my stay. When I wanted to do COVID-19 test in Lebanon, it was an NGO called ‘This is Lebanon’ that gave me money to pay before I was allowed to return home.

A check on the nation’s migrants in Oman shows they were not faring better.

One of the returnees, Suzan, described her experience as one she does not want to remember anymore.

She said: “I was introduced to travelling to Oman by a man who happens to be my agent. He came with information that they needed a stylist, but at the end, he told me about a teaching job, which caught my interest.

“But the story changed afterwards. He did my passport for N25,000. The experience is a very long and sad story which I don’t wish to recollect.”

Zain Lawson, a co-founder of This is Lebanon, an international NGO assisting Africans undergoing hardship to return home, told The Nation of a Nigerian woman who was supposed to return home recently but could not because her former agent filed a complaint against her.

Lawson said: “The same agent who beat her up threatened to kill her and stole her salary. After she ran away, he reported her to the police so if she tries to fly out she’ll be arrested.

“She reported her agent to Lebanon’s Ministry of Labour but they blocked her after several messages.”

He further said: “One of the Nigerian women who was injured during the Beirut blast was thrown out on the street, went to get her wounds bandaged, went to the airport covered in bandages from her injuries, but was arrested because her employer made a complaint against her.”

Kafala system explained

Experts in the migration world have pointed out the ills of the Kafala system practised in many Middle East countries.

One of them, Omotola Fawunmi, founder of RebirthUB Africa said the system has been around for a long time and it is a predominant employment system in the Middle East.

Fawunmi said: “A lot has been written about the system but many people sincerely do not know about the Kafala system and what it means for them. It is a system that impoverishes. It is a system that makes an economic migrant either a slave to the recruiter or the employer.

“Kafala should be abolished. It doesn’t give the migrant domestic worker options or choices. It empowers slavery, it empowers subjugation, it empowers oppression of the migrant domestic workers.”

Ground Coordinator of This is Lebanon, Nia Evans, said the Kafala employment system is state sponsored slavery and domestic workers lack the most basic of protections.

“Along with Oman, Lebanon remains the only country in the Middle East without any labour laws governing domestic workers.

“There are no laws of any kind that protect domestic workers. Lebanese employers have complete impunity to treat workers as their property: they can enslave, torture, rape, and kill, with no consequences. Justice is never served in Lebanon for domestic workers.”

Omotola said she has several cases and several stories of migrant domestic workers who have been killed, maimed or raped and forced to commit suicide.”

She went on to advocate the abolition of the oppressive system.

“There are other systems like the one in the UAE that honours the migrant worker and makes sure that the promises are kept by both parties. When our government sign bilateral labour agreement, we counsel that they please read the provisions of that agreement before signing them so they don’t sign away our women and sisters into slavery by executive orders.”

COVID-19 compounds migrants’ plight

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic is said to have aggravated the plight of the migrants. According to Nia Evans of This is Lebanon, “before the pandemic, Lebanon’s general security stated that two women die each week due to these conditions, often from suicide or failed escapes. Now, under restrictions designed to slow the spread of COVID-19, entrapment, increased workplace abuse and non-payment of salary increase the likelihood of self-harm, suicide and death.”

Nia added that COVID-19 is spreading like wild fire in Lebanon and “MDW are the most vulnerable in this society and are therefore more prone to being infected by the virus. MDW have no access to health care or social support. They are stigmatised, abused and subjected to racism on a daily basis.

“They are at risk of homelessness and being detained and placed in already overcrowded detention facilities. Those stranded are vulnerable to exploitation, including sex trafficking or being sold to other employers.”

On her part, Omotola said because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the downturn in the economy, a lot of migrant workers were pushed out on the street and left to fend for themselves because they could no longer be catered for.

“They were stranded in a country they couldn’t leave and they didn’t have enough money. Some of them have had to turn to prostitution just to survive.

“While I don’t support prostitution, I find it very sickening that women would have to turn to it to survive because there seems to be no other way to live.

“Our sisters do not have to live like this.  Our sisters, our mothers, our wives and citizens of Nigeria should not be involved in this.  We need to put an end to this. The government needs to be a lot more responsible and responsive.

“The government needs to understand that when a citizen approaches her government in a foreign country, her government should not collude with her slave masters to keep her impoverished.

“I say this with all sense of responsibility. I say this with all sense of modesty. Our sisters are suffering; period. They are not just in a space of impoverishment and their back being doubly bent, they have also lost their self esteem; they have lost their sense of personhood.

“A lot of them are deeply trumatised, and even if they return home, they cannot raise their heads high because they have been battered.  As a collective, as a nation, and as a body of people, we can do better.”

How African leaders can checkmate Lebanon

Worried by the despicable experiences of Africans in the Middle East, Nia called on African leaders to stop the menace. “Many of these African governments do have the power to stand up and fight for their workers. Unfortunately, only few of them are taking the steps necessary.

“On the most basic level, they can be providing evacuation flights, quarantine measures and ensuring that they have a Consul in Lebanon who cares for each of their nationals, more than the shady business deals done through the consulate.

“These governments could take a coordinated action that would almost immediately get all migrant domestic workers in Lebanon home who would like to leave.

“The African governments could solve this problem overnight. Lebanon is in a currency crisis, and one of the largest sources of income in Lebanon is money sent from Lebanese nationals who own businesses in Lebanon.

“These countries could unite and say that they won’t allow money to be sent to Lebanon until Lebanon returns their women. The African sending countries have the upper-hand, but they have to choose to use it.”

Quoting the Lebanese Embassy in Nigeria, Nia said there are approximately 5,000 Nigerians living in Lebanon.

“Many of these Nigerians are MDW, identified as females and being made destitutes. They have been forced into domestic servitude. They have been mistreated physically, sexually and mentally by their employers and agents.

“As a collective, This is Lebanon and Syrian Eyes have been assisting the Nigerian community of MDWs since August 2020. So far, in the safe houses we have supported approximately 150 Nigerian women with zero assistance from Nigerian authorities.

“At present, we are supporting approximately 51 women who have escaped from abusive agents/employers, women who have been dumped in front of the embassy and women who have been forced into homelessness.

“With very limited resources we have been attempting to meet the women’s most basic needs by providing food, covering rents, purchasing flights and covering the cost of PCR tests.”

Lebanon stops issuance of visas to domestic workers from Nigeria

The Lebanese Government early in June this year announced that it had suspended issuance of working visas to Nigerians seeking to work in Lebanon, particularly for domestic work.

Lebanese Ambassador to Nigeria, Ambassador Houssam Diab, stated that the suspension started since May 1 as a result of complaints of abuse by some employers as well as the case of the video of Peace Busari, a Nigerian lady auctioned for sale for $1000 on social media in April this year, which went viral.

According to Diab, the suspension was to stem the tide for such categories of workers pending the time the procedure would be properly harmonised with the Ministry of Labour, in line with best practices of managed and orderly migration.