We Can't Afford Airfares To Return Home, Trafficked Nigerian Ladies Stranded In Lebanon Beg Government To Help

With the Lebanese government unwilling to shell out more money for their airfares, they would remain in limbo if the federal government or private sector fails to bail them out.

The ladies were tricked into taking jobs as domestic help in the country.

About 40 of them were scheduled to be on a flight to Abuja last Friday. SaharaReporters learnt that they could not return because they could  not afford the airfares.

The Lebanese government had helped 21 girls return to Nigeria two weeks ago but decided against continuing with the plan. 

Sources close to the matter told SaharaReporters that only five ladies who paid the $600 airfare returned to Nigeria on Friday.

The girls, who are living on their wages before fleeing the employ of their most brutal homesteads, said they had no money to buy plane tickets to return home.

In a video clip recorded last week, the ladies, who were hoping to be on the Friday flight to Abuja said, "We are hungry, we are tired, we want to come back home."

Some of the ladies on the last trip sponsored by Lebanon revealed that travel agents in Nigeria recruited unsuspecting girls for the illicit trade by uploading their pictures on a Lebanese database for domestic help.

In some cases, they extort as much as N400, 000 from them for visa processing and purchase of travel tickets.

Unknown to these girls, Lebanese families go to this database to purchase them and pay for their visas. The girls say $2,000 is the rate to buy a housemaid from Nigeria.

One of the returnees that interacted with SaharaReporters said over a hundred girls were stranded in Lebanon. She said they combined their meagre earnings to rent a room where they all lived.

With the Lebanese government unwilling to shell out more money for their airfares, they would remain in limbo if the federal government or private sector fails to bail them out.

Efforts by SaharaReporters to reach the Chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs, Tolulope Sadipe, who has been instrumental in helping some of the returnees come home, proved abortive as calls to her phone rang out.