Meet Richard
Richard (Nigeria) about one month after being rescued. Lampedusa, Italy. April 2017. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
by:
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
April 2017
Published:
2017
Revised:
1/9/25
Meet Richard.
22 years old and from Benin City, Nigeria.
To reach Lampedusa he crossed three countries: Nigeria, Niger, and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
Richard left Nigeria on 10 July 2016 and his journey took about nine months. He had a brother, but he was killed in a bombing in town. He had to leave because people were coming for him and his sister, Faith, who was 18 years old. His house was bombed, but his mother stayed behind anyway.
Together, he and his sister left and they spent three days on the road to Agadez, Niger, where they stayed for one week.
From Agadez, he crossed the Sahara desert in a car with 26 people, which cost 80,000 Nigerian Naira (NGN), about the equivalent of 250 USD. There were dead animals and people who had perished along the way. It is hot, to say the least. Death, he said, is all around.
Richard arrived in an unnamed city in Libya, then moved onward to Sabha, Libya, were he was held in prison for three months.
“Prisoners were beaten on the
bottom of their feet...”
The traffickers in Sabha used a piece of water pipe to beat him. Prisoners were beaten on the bottom of their feet with it, “fifty lashings,” he said, every day. They’ll hand you a phone to people to call family for ransom; family will listen on the line while the abused screams in agony.
Everyday Richard was burned on his arms with a hot piece of metal and electrocuted. His case had more at stake than usual. His sister was threatened with forced prostitution if his family did not send the money to cover the cost of their releases.
Prostitution is out in the open. Women and girls will be held at the compound, and men from within Sabha know they can go there to pay for sex. It’s another facet of the business of human trafficking in Libya. Richard and his friend Philip (Nigeria) saw women being raped in the open space of the compound where they lived.
To eat, Richard would receive one handful of rice daily that was mixed with canned tomatoes. Sometimes he’d get a spoonful of plain spaghetti in the evening, his share of a plateful that was given to a whole group to eat. They drank salty tap water. Everyday people were starving. Everyday people were sick from the water.
Richard’s mother finally sold her land for money, then transferred 460,000 NGN to a Nigerian bank account to release Richard and Faith.
“I don’t know how I got
saved from the water. It’s God.”
Traffickers keep bank accounts in every country where people in the migrant community originate so they can make swift, easy transfers.
He and Faith left for Tripoli in a pickup truck. He got sick there, and a man from Cameroon, another migrant, who they called “the doctor” gave him some basic medicine to recover.
His sister worked as a storekeeper and Richard worked as a welder within the Tripoli city limits, each for about four months.
On 1 January 2017, there was a shootout between police and Arab drug and arms smugglers. Smugglers in Tripoli use Black migrants as workers in their operation, because if they themselves are caught they’ll face severe consequences; so people from Ghana, The Gambia, etc. are employed distributing weapons and drugs on their behalf. Casualties were high. 1,200 Black refugees were shot dead, many just by-standers in the area, while 800 more were deported from Libya.
Among those people was Richard’s sister, Faith, working in a nearby shop. Richard’s mom still thinks Faith is alive. He hasn’t had the courage to tell her yet she was killed, “she would just die,” Richard said. When they talk on the phone he simply tells her she is out, but doing fine.
He left Tripoli for Sabratha and stayed at the coastal town for one day.
Richard crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a rubber dinghy at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. with 130-140 people, including eight women; no children or babies were on board. He sat on the edge with one foot dangling into the sea.
A wave struck and he was knocked out of the boat with eight others. Philip watched it unfold. “This man supposed to be a dead man right now,” he said. Two were saved, himself and another, while seven others drowned before their eyes.
“I don’t know how I got saved from the water,” said Richard, “It’s God.”
In total, Richard was out to sea for nine hours. He was rescued by a Spanish ship, then transferred to the Guardia Costiera that brought to Lampedusa where he landed on 5 March 2017.
Richard has a wife in Nigeria and a baby girl named Joy who was born 15 November 2016. He loves football. He is educated and graduated from school. He wants to continue learning and working, probably as a welder. In time, he would like to send for his wife and child in Nigeria.
Richard is an amazing human being.