The spate of deportation of Nigerians from abroad and the massive exodus of Nigerians yet from home through legal and illegal routes in search of a ‘better life’ have become a worrisome image liability for the country.

Nobody seems to know exactly− the number of Nigerians who have been deported from abroad in recent times – because the waves of deportation keep coming and it does not seem to stop any time soon. It will be hard to have a reliable working figure for now.

From the US, to United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, China, Saudi Arabia and to nearby Cameroon and Libya, Nigerians in high numbers, are on a daily basis being bundled into the next available aircraft as deportees over offences relating to illegal migration, passport problem, tax clearance, drug trafficking, financial fraud among many other acts that they have been notorious for.

EMBARRASSING DEPORTATION

Nigerians at home woke up Wednesday, May 16, 2018 to the shocking news of plan by the German government to send 30,000 Nigerians in Germany packing− they are illegal migrants, Jan Hecker, Security Adviser to the President of Germany, told Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in Abuja.

Daily Trust Newspaper reported that, over a thousand Nigerians were deported from various European and African countries between February 1 and April 6, 2017.

The deportees, the newspaper said, were mostly expelled from Cameroon, Libya, Italy, South Africa, United Kingdom, Mali, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Hungary and Germany. In all, 1,060 Nigerians got the boot from these countries and landed in Nigeria.

Just a month after their deportation, the government of the United Kingdom (UK) deported 35 Nigerians for committing immigration-related offences in the country. The deportees were 30 males and five females.

In October 2017, a minimum of 1,549 Nigerians were sent back to Nigeria, with the exemption of the controversial 100,000 from Cameroon.

These include a minimum of 23 Nigerians deported from Spain, 187 from South Africa, 924 from Libya, 110 from Italy, 41 from the U.S, 146 from the UK and 118 from six other European countries: Austria, Germany, Hungry, Switzerland, Norway and Denmark.

Also a month before then, precisely September, Rita Orji, Chairperson, House Committee on Diaspora Affairs disclosed that 12,000 Nigerians were set to be deported from Germany. Their asylum claims were rejected by the German government, she said.

In June 2016, 41 Nigerians were deported from the United States for drug, police and immigration related offences.

The deportees, all males – nine of them were brought back for drug offences, 26 for police offences while six had immigration related problems. Another 163 Nigerians who were stranded in Libya voluntarily returned, a week before the arrival of the 41 deportees from the UK.

According to International Organisation for Migration (IOM), five chartered flights brought in 1,102 Nigerian. Since the launch of IOM’s humanitarian voluntary return programme funded by the EU-IOM Joint initiative for the protection and reintegration of migrants in the country on May 20, 2017 more than 7,600 Nigerian migrants had returned home.

Thus, in 2017 alone, over 22,244 Nigerians were deported from different of the world to Nigeria. This figure does not include 16,387 released by the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) as the number of Nigerians deported from different part of the world. Of this, 5,908 were returned from Libya − 3,100 were male while 2,600 were female and 208 minors.

More worrisome is the determination of Donald Trump, President of the US to send thousands of Nigerian children and Nigerians, he said have finished schooling but refused to go back home, out of America.

If Trump succeeds in repealing of the deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) policy, thousands of Nigerian children in the US face possible deportation.

DACA is an American immigration policy set up by the Barack Obama administration in 2012. It has protected nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.

Thousands of Nigerian children immigrants are currently being protected by the policy.

Jeff Sessions, US attorney general, announced that “the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded”.

The US President has never hidden his disdain for Nigerians in the United States. During one of his campaign outings, he issued a warning that “Nigerians in the States would leave once he becomes president”, because, according to him, “Nigerians and Mexicans have taken over jobs meant for Americans, therefore, they must leave.”

The Republican Presidential Candidate of the United States of America, USA, Donald Trump, has threatened to evacuate Nigerians from the country once he becomes President.

The American Billionaire, who tagged Nigeria as a corrupt Nation, issued the threat on Sunday during a claiming that: “Nigerians and Mexicans have taken all the jobs meant for honest hard working Americans.”

“Why can’t they stay in their own country? Why? I’ll tell you why. Because they are corrupt.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/embarrassing-nigerians-as-rejects-of-the-world/

Buhari caused it....

Interesting

Holumhidey:
Buhari caused it....

i guess Nigerians were never deported nor wished to seek their Eldorado abroad before the current presido came into power, abi? Nigeria was such a great place before he came into power, right?

the reality is that, as the west continues to rob Africa of its natural resources AND help bastard leaders to stay in power (or disregard their ill actions), the migration "legal or otherwise" will continue...

the president doesn't like staying at home how do u expect his citizens to like home