Over 5,000 Nigerian women are stranded in the Iraq the Chairman/CEO of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Hon Abike Dabiri-Erewa made this known Wednesday.
She said the women had gone into that country recovering from war to do caregiver jobs, but things did not go well for them as they expected. They are exploited by their recruiters, the NIDCOM boss disclosed that one of the women died recently under mysterious circumstances.
“As I speak with you today there are about 5000 women stranded in Iraq,” she said in Lagos during sensitization workshop organised by NIDCOM.
” I just dealt with a case last week. A husband sent his wife to Iraq to go and be a caregiver. She’s dead.
“Can you imagine! Now how do you bring the body back? That’s what is worrying the husband. He doesn’t know where to start. So we had to intervene. The Nigerian high commission had been able to intervene, they would do an autopsy to see how she died because she just died mysteriously being a caregiver.”
National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons said rogue labour recruiters are behind the movement of Nigerian women to Iraq for domestic servitude in cities like Baghdad and Basra. They are made to work long hours under harsh conditions and never allowed to venture out from where they are working.
