Part 5: How a Nigerian teen trafficked through Libya became a celebrity barber in Europe

In Part 4, Jimmy’s desperate wait for rescue turned into a trap. The men who came promising Europe delivered him instead into the hands of traffickers. Chained, tortured, and forced to call home for ransom, he turned seventeen in a Libyan cell where screams were currency and starvation was the norm. His family was helpless. His body was breaking. And just when escape seemed impossible, they sold him again.

Catch up here: Part 4: How a Nigerian teen trafficked through Libya became a celebrity barber in Europe

Getting Trafficked, Again

The nightmare wasn't over. It had only changed hands.

The Arabs sold them, and this time, the buyer wasn't foreign. He was Nigerian. The same man Jimmy and his group had been told would help them cross into Europe. Their supposed saviour was the one who betrayed them from the start. He had given up their location. He had arranged for them to be captured. Now, weeks later, he returned to "buy them back."

When they arrived at his compound, the story flipped. He told them he had "rescued" them. That he had paid a fortune to secure their release, and that now, they owed him double.

He moved them to a different prison. It wasn't a dungeon of chains and gas burns like before. There were no shackles. But there were walls, armed guards, locked doors, and a rule: you couldn't leave.

The beatings didn't stop. They came from Nigerians now. From men who spoke the same language, came from the same country. 

Morning and night, pain was part of the routine. Before breakfast, beating. Before sleep, beating. You got used to it like you got used to hunger, like you got used to fear. It was simply life now.

They were fed twice a day. Sometimes swallow, sometimes spaghetti. But what did it matter when you were too sore to sit up straight, too bruised to chew, too tired to feel?

The man had all their contacts. Every number they'd shared before leaving Nigeria. So he made them start again, calling home, begging, screaming, pleading for millions in ransom.

Jimmy called his parents again.

This time, the silence on the other end wasn't ignorance; it was helplessness. His mother was sick now, in and out of the hospital. His father had no means. His siblings had nothing to sell. There was nothing left to try. His mother sobbed through the line, her voice weak, her spirit broken.

"They said they'll throw me into the sea if we don't pay," Jimmy told her.

But she had no answer. Just tears. "This might be the last time we speak," she said. And in that moment, Jimmy knew. No help was coming. No one could save him.

So the traffickers made a new decision: if they couldn't make money through ransom, they would make money through labour. They began asking each prisoner what skill they had. What they could offer.

Jimmy thought carefully.

In truth, he had no real experience cutting men's hair. All his time in his brother's salon in Benin had been spent around wigs and women's styles. He knew how to trim and blend synthetic fibres, how to shape lace fronts, but not how to line a man's hairline.

But you couldn't say that in Libya. Talking about women, touching women's hair, and admitting you worked in female salons was dangerous. Deadly, even. So he lied.

He said, "I'm a barber."

And just like that, a blade and a plastic comb were placed in his hand. No clippers. No mirror. Just raw tools and expectations.

Jimmy started cutting hair in the most unthinkable place imaginable: Libyan prison camps.

He trimmed the same men who beat him. Faded the edges of other captives. He was moved from one holding facility to the next, cutting hair for Nigerian and Ghanaian prisoners who, like him, were stuck in limbo.

And somehow, a seed was planted.

"I wasn't cutting in a shop," Jimmy said. "I was cutting in prison camps. For the same men who chained me. For captors and prisoners alike. Razor blade and comb. That's all I had."

It wasn't freedom. But it was a start. They told him he'd have to work off his debt. So Jimmy got to work.

Just when Jimmy thought the worst might be over, or maybe that it would never end at all, war broke out in the camps…

Don’t miss Part 6 of Jimmy’s story next Friday, only on Pulse.ng.

READ RECENT: What Happens If You Die Owing A Loan In Nigeria?