Nigerians probably still remember the sympathy the Chipolopolo of Zambia enjoyed at Tunisia 94 following the tragedy of April 27, 1993. They were on their way to Dakar, Senegal, for a USA 94 qualifier when tragedy struck. Due to the pilot’s wrong engine shutdown, all the souls aboard the Zambia Air Force plane perished in the Atlantic. It was a tragedy of tragedies. A similar fate would have befallen the Super Eagles this week.
Many Nigerians are talking about the horrific treatment the Eagles received at the Al-Abraq airport, but the real story is the death plotted for them by the Libyan authorities, a death they escaped by sheer divine providence. Yes, the Eagles and the entire contingent navigated 16 horrible hours with biscuits and water, before getting croissants and soft drinks for breakfast, but that is not the story. The Libyans, the same people raping and maiming Nigerians at this very moment, wanted the Eagles DEAD. North African teams have pulled murderous stunts for ages, diverting flights, denying visiting teams of sleep, making murderous gestures at players on the pitch, beating up supporters’ clubs, etc, and the cancerous outfit called CAF, the same joke of a joint that handed Emmanuel Adebayor and his teammates a ban after they called off their AFCON participation following their ordeal under rebel fire in which they had lost two members of their travelling crew in January 2010, has been spectacularly useless over the years.
By sheer providence, the pilot that conveyed the Eagles to what could have been their funeral is a North African, and his testimony will shame Libya for a long time to come. Hear him: “We got approval from the Libyan civil aviation authority to land. But unfortunately, when we started the descent, they asked us to divert to Mitiga, which is almost 150 miles (300 km) away. This was not even our alternate airport.”
The pilot warned the suspected murderers eight times as fuel reserves gradually ran out, but they hadn’t the slightest regard for Nigerian lives—I will show why, presently. Listen to the pilot again: “I asked them several times, at least eight times, and I warned them that I would be in trouble for the fuel situation. They said it was from the highest authority and that we had to divert to Mitiga immediately.” The Super Eagles were staring death in the face, but that was Libya’s perfect plan. In case you disagree with my analysis, then please tell me what being deliberately left stranded in the air with fuel running out means! Of course, South Africans have been rejoicing as usual over Nigeria’s terrible ordeal, but their tears are buried in the future. Anyway, the pilot complied, but hell awaited the Eagles and their crew in Mitiga: “Even the airport in Mitiga was not well-equipped. There was no ILS, no other approach aids, so we had to land visually. It was our first and last chance with this changing company, and I know the area very well, but it was not an easy matter at all. This is our flight plan. We cannot hide anything. There is a lot of cross-checking and redundancy in aviation, so they cannot hide this information or say anything other than the truth.”
Why do the Libyans hate Nigerians so much? Well, North Africans generally hate West Africans. Besides, if you have travelled with me on this page, you will have noticed my thesis on the power of nakedness. As I have theorized, nothing empowers terrorists like the sight of their victims’ naked, helpless body. Because of sex trafficking, the naked Nigerian female body seems specifically made for Libyans. Libyan terrorists have a rich supply of Nigerian bodies and have done unspeakable things with them. The video which went viral in September showing imprisoned Nigerian women calling on the Nigerian government for help depicts the most comfortable treatment Nigerians have in Libya: imprisonment. How do you expect a people who have a rich supply of your women’s bodies to have any regard for you? It is like asking nomadic terrorists to have any regard for you when they have endless access to your women’s bodies and encounter no resistance as they burn down your villages.
In their Chatham House report titled Tracing the ‘continuum of violence’ between Nigeria and Libya: How the movement of people from Edo State fuels the Libyan conflict economy, authors Leah de Haan, Iro Aghedo and Tim Eaton show the nexus between the Libyan conflict economy and human trafficking in Edo State. As they argue so brilliantly, much of the violence that is experienced in Edo State is mirrored along the journey to Libya. They write: “In Agadez, people moving are hidden or held in compounds before travelling across the Sahara. The captivity, lack of appropriate living standards and the beatings by smugglers and traffickers often happen because people moving lack sufficient funds to pay them, thus linking the experiences to the economic inequity in Edo State.” For Nigerian boys, there is “forced labour at gold-mining sites.”
As the writers show, the journey from Agadez to Sebha in southern Libya is “characterized by thirst, malnutrition, beatings and death.” The violence worsens once the journey across the Sahara Desert starts. Thus: “‘Anyone who falls off the truck as they traverse the desert is either simply left or covered in sand before being abandoned.’ The desert tracks to Libya are…littered with corpses…Of the 602,000 people estimated by the former Nigerian permanent representative to the UN to have travelled from Nigeria in 2016, 27,000 are said to have died in the desert.”
In Libya, Nigerians and other West Africans are treated worse than animals, but they keep coming. Often, once the Nigerian sex slaves become pregnant, the Libyan rapists kill them, declaring that their religion forbids marriage to infidels! Sometimes, they slash the slaves’ throat if they do not attain orgasm. For those lucky to escape, there is a story of moths-long or year-long rapes to tell. The number of Libyan babies nurtured by escapee Nigerian sex slaves is growing by the day.
By something that looks like sheer providence, the court-proclaimed deputy governor of Edo State was on the contingent to Libya. I hope he now realizes that what he thinks to be the horrendous treatment he suffered in Libya is actually the best a Nigerian can have. Like other Nigerians, Edo State indigenes endure hell in Libya everyday. Men and women are raped, beaten to stupor, and their vital organs harvested. Unless the supply of Nigerian slaves to Libya’s conflict markets stops, Libyans will never realize that Nigerians are even human beings to begin with.
By the way, AFCON/CAF Champions League in their presents format won’t do. The “Arabs” need their separate League/Nations Cup.
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