•Accuses French police of traumatizing, brutalizing, dehumanizing her

IT is a pathetic story for France based Nigerian woman, Ms Ehi Nosakhale Ese from Ebelle in Igueben Local Government Area of Edo State who alleged that she has been traumatized, dehumanized, brutalized and now being forced to live on the streets of Nice in France. Worst of all, she said she is being treated as a psychiatric patient when she is not. She is about 55 years old.

According to Ese, her predicament started when she refused the sexual advances of her employer she identified as Mr. Primon who, as a result of her refusal, unjustly sacked her without paying her entitlements.

She said she approached the courts and won and her employer was ordered to pay her entitlements but that the man vowed that she would not live to spend the money and true to the threat, he has allegedly used every means to frustrate her including using the police to cart away her physical cash, jewelries, choice wines and other items running into millions of euros. Ese said she traveled to Italy in the early 90s but on discovering the reality when she got there, she opted to get married and subsequently commenced her educational advancement instead of going into prostitution.

She narrated her ordeal

I studied in Italy and I came to France as an Erasmus student, which is a student study exchange programme. On getting here they told me that I should help them to be implicating Nigerians but I refused. They said I should be translating what Nigerians are saying on the phone to them since I am a language translator, I studied languages.

They wanted me to be misinterpreting their conversations to them but I cannot do that because what they’re doing to Nigerians here is really horrible. I said I cannot do that job, I cannot implicate my own kinsmen. Thereafter, because of what I studied, they were able to get me a job easily. But when I got there, the owner of the place of work said I should be cooking for them and I was doing that but I needed something more because Italy gave me a document that covers the whole Europe such that any country I go I could ask for authorization to work.

Travails and set up

The owner of the place then asked me to have sexual relationship with him but when I refused he was determined to use the police against me because he is a very close friend of the head of police in the area. He was looking for an opportunity to terminate my appointment. Here when you give somebody a work contract you cannot terminate that appointment, but he did. So, I reported to the Inspector of Work.

They called him, they wrote him a letter and when he refused to comply, they now took both of us to court. My lawyer won the case for me. He appealed and my lawyer also won the appeal for me. But on the day they wanted to give me my cheque, that was the day his police friend came to my house to look for me but luckily, I was not at home.

They came again, took me to the police station and ordered me to tell them how a Nigerian who they killed died. I said no, I didn’t know her and they really dealt with me. The policemen raped me through the anus and I suffered injury which led to my being operated upon at the hospital. Presently, I find it very difficult to sit on the chair, the evidence is there.

I was between life and death, they took me to the hospital to issue a certificate of death for me, but God was so kind I woke up before the doctor came. When I left the hospital I sued them for damages because they have destroyed my life, I cannot stand, I cannot move. As I am speaking now I cannot see because of the knife they used to pierce my eyes. The ophthalmologist has told them they should give me medicated glasses, but till now they did nothing.

They broke my waist, one part of my body is paralysed. So, when they saw that I sued them, they dragged me to court, looked for two Nigerians and gave them documents to testify against me that I was the one that trafficked them to Europe. At the court, the judge asked me who was the lawyer that won my case against my employer and I asked her if that was why I was in court but she ordered me to shut up that I was a human trafficker. “You’re black and secondly you are a Nigerian,” the judge told me and sent me to prison for doing nothing. They destroyed me. It was really shocking.

I wrote letters to the Nigerian Embassy several times, but they never allowed that letter to get there. After releasing me from prison they took me to a deportation camp. They came on the 10th of July 2018 and took me to the Embassy. It was horrible when the Nigerian Ambassador saw me. She asked me what happened and I narrated all my ordeals to her. The ambassador now asked the police, “but you did not tell me that police raped her, you did not tell me that you people destroyed her. Is this person in the picture the same person here now? It was you doctor who was telling us that this woman is not well. You did not tell us this woman was beaten and you said I should give papers to you to go and dump her in Nigeria”. She cried. The Ambassador now asked them to go and treat me and come back. Since 2018 they have not gone back to the embassy to tell them what was going on.

Life after prison

They took me to prison again because I asked the Social Department to help me. Because they wanted to protect the police they said I was mad. But last year when the Social Department called the police because I told them I would not sleep on the streets again, they took me back to prison on remand for one month from 30th March to 20th April last year and the Judge on 20th of April last year sentenced me to six months imprisonment. They asked for psychiatric report from a specialist psychiatrist. They came to visit me to analyse all that they said but they told the judge that I was not a psychiatric patient, that I didn’t have any symptoms of psychiatry, nothing like that. They have been giving me psychiatric drugs for four years. When they read the paper in court the lawyer they gave to me that day asked the judge, ‘what a contradiction?’ To protect the police they said that this woman is crazy, but to protect the social worker now you said she is not crazy. Which one do we believe? You people have done all what you want to do to this woman, but you people should leave this woman alone, she has high blood pressure, very high. They treated me like this because I did not mess around with my body with them. But I am not regretting it.

Present condition

Since I left the prison, I have been living outside like a dog because before I came back they removed all my property, gold, shoes, wine and other items, they removed everything. I wrote to the Nigerian Diaspora Commission to come to my aid and I want them to recover my gold and my properties for me because my gold is worth 1.1 million Euro, my wine is over ten million Euro, I’m a collector of wines. They followed me because I wanted to buy an international restaurant here.

Lawyer writes Diaspora Commission

Ese’s lawyer in Nigeria, S. O. Agwinede Esq. appealed to the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission and its Chairman, Hon. Abike Dabiri – Erewa, to come to her aid in recovering her money paid her as compensation for wrongful dismissal by her employers, Sari Brasserie SKYROS owned by Mr. Primon. In a letter of reminder marked SOA/GEN/VOL.1/26/05/23, dated 16/05/2023 and titled: Reminder- Dehumanising, Dastard and Cruel Treatment Meted Out on a Nigerian Citizen in Nice, France, Re: Ms Ehi Nosakhale Ese referred the Commission to its earlier letter of complaint on the issue with number SOA/GEN/VOL.1/17/03/20, dated 21 March 2020 which was received by the Commission on 25 September 2020.

The letter of reminder again appealed to the Commission to come to the aid of Ms Ehi Nosakhale Ese in recovering her belongings noting that she was at the verge of losing hope and trust in the Commission set up by her country to help her as a Nigerian living abroad. In the earlier letter of appeal to the commission, Ese’s lawyers chronicled the genesis of her travail in the hands of Mr. Primon and the French Police. He said her employer was paying her €1,800 instead of the agreed salary of €2,400.

The lawyer said “The said Labour and Commerce Court directed Mr. Primon to come and hand over all her terminal benefits to her in court including her salaries. For fear of pains of sanction by the said Court, Mr. Primon obeyed and complied with the court orders. As he was handing over the cheque to her, Mr. Primon threatened her with the following words: ‘If your lawyer wins this case (case to pay up dues due to the wrongful dismissal), nobody will see your dead body’.

“The Labour and Commerce Court finally made its award for her wrongful dismissal in May, 2015. The cheque for the awarded damages was released to her in April, 2016. True to his threat quoted above, Mr. Primon started using the French Police to be laying all forms of trumped up criminal charges against her and the Police brutal harassment commenced on the 10th day of May, 2016 when Mr. Primon instigated the Brigadier de Police Damez Francious at 28’s invitation to their office in Nice, France”.

The letter stated further that the French Police instigated the neighbours of Ms Ese Nosakhale Ehi against her and were allegedly aided by the police to assault her and pleaded that the commission should help her to get justice. (Saturday Vanguard)

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