A Nigerian migrant is worth N145,000 ($400) in one of Libya's thriving slave markets that takes advantage of Africans trying to flee to Europe.
According to an investigation by US television network, CNN, a lot of desperate migrants from sub-Saharan Africa trying to get into Europe through the Mediterranean are exploited by smugglers when they make a required stop in the North Africa nation.
In a video obtained by CNN, three men were auctioned off to a buyer as "big strong boys for farm work" and were sold for $400 apiece.
The men, one of them identified as a Nigerian, are victims of a growing industry of slave markets operating in several locations in Libya.
Libya has been a hotbed for illegal migrants for years now as it serves as the transit hub to the Mediterranean which connects to Europe. Every year, migrants embark on the perilous journey across the sea to escape the economic and/or political uncertainties in their countries of origin.
According to Missing Migrants, an organization that tracks deaths along migratory routes, at least 2,985 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa or the Middle East in 2017 alone.
However, this has not stopped people from trying to make the journey into Europe to seek greener pastures.
A government crackdown on trafficking has resulted in a drastic reduction in boat journeys which means many are trapped in Libya for a long time waiting for their turn to travel. The migrants are mostly held in connecting houses or detention centres that the smugglers control.
This creates a situation where smugglers are able to exploit the migrants, especially as soon as they run out of money to pay which means they're viewed as properties.
Since most smuggling rings are run by local organised gangs, militias and corrupt security officials in Libya, many victims are trapped in unfamiliar surroundings with captors who are not shy to resort to violent means.
Smugglers are known to blackmail migrants into doing free labour or outrightly selling them to other militias involved in human trafficking. Other times, they hold migrants for ransom and call their families to pay while issuing threats to kill them.
Female migrants are in more danger of being used as sex slaves especially if they don't have anything to pay their captors.
21-year-old Victory, a Nigerian migrant from Edo State, told CNN about how he was repeatedly sold by his smugglers to engage in forced labour for his buyers who brutalised him alongside many others.
According to him, he was also held for ransom, while his mother in Nigeria "went to a couple villages, borrowing money"to save his life.
Before he ended up in a migrant detention centre, Victory revealed that he had spent more than N1 million trying to cross the sea into Europe.
He told CNN, "I was sold on my way coming here. As I was sold they demanded a ransom. The pusher man that pushed me from Nigeria, I gave him money but he did not pay. So they said since he did not pay that money, they now sold me.
"From a week, they'll start beating you so that your money will come quickly so I was there for eight months before I could pay my money and I went out.
"If you look at most of the people here, if you check their bodies, you'll see the marks. They're beaten with electric cables. Even your butthole they shoot up a sharp object. Most of them lost their lives there.
"Going back home now, I'm totally frustrated. I don't know where to start from because I spent my life savings leaving the country (Nigeria)."
Other migrants such as Ivorien, Moussa Sanogo, said the Libyan captors who were Arabs viewed black-skinned migrants as "nothing but animals" and treated them as such.
He said "They are buying you. You're there, you have been arrested, you see they are judging your price like merchandise. They bought you and you're going to work... like a slave. I would not wish it on my enemy."
Cameroonian migrant, Maxime Ndong, said that migrants who resisted the oppression of their Libyan captors were sometimes shot to death.
According to the CNN investigation, there are usually one to two auctions every month in at least nine known locations across Libya with many more unknown.
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