60 stranded Nigerian women in Saudi Arabia seek help to return home

About sixty Nigerian women in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, are calling for help to return home.

Reports from Sahara Reporters indicated that the women currently live in four overcrowded homes within the city.

Leader of the Nigerian community in the country, Alade Abdulaziz, stated that the Nigerian consulate in Jeddah has arranged a flight to bring the women home.

He also added that a flight was first arranged to evacuate the women on August 25, 2020 but the process was halted when the Nigerian consulate office in Jeddah offered a purportedly better arrangement.

“This all started when the consulate said it was okay for me to organise some of the girls for evacuation,” Abdulaziz said. “It is a process I hoped would take a week, but it has stretched on for three weeks now, and not one flight has left. Thankfully, they called me from the consulate today (Thursday). They said they had better travel plans than ours. My concern is when their aircraft will take off.”

According to bdulaziz, the 45 women could face starvation if they are not immediately repatriated.

“I have 18 of them in my home, where I am staying with my wife, my son and my daughter. The ladies are living on the little money they came with from their employers. Some of them have been here for five months, even me and my family may go hungry if these girls don’t leave soon … within the week.”

The women were rescued from their abusive employers whom they worked for as domestic workers.

“Since this month started, I have made at least 400 calls, trying to get out ladies trapped in their employer’s house,” Abdulaziz said. “Not all of them received ticket money from their bosses. Some could not endure the two years and had to run away.”

If the Nigerian government fails to repatriate the women, Abdulaziz said they could either return to the houses of the employers they ran away from and obtain a clearance document stating that they committed no crime or pay money to get cleared at any of the country’s immigration offices.

“I have the names of more than 200 ‘runaways. We are appealing to the Nigerian government to beg the Saudi government to wave the clearance fee so that they can be cleared at immigration for free,” he said.