348 Nigerians have been deported by the South African and Libyan governments for of fences for immigration-related and other related offences, the Diaspora Newsletter released from the presidency has revealed.
Quoting DSP Joseph Alabi, the spokesman of the Lagos Airport Police Command, the Newsletter said the deportees who were all men, landed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
He said they were brought back to Nigeria from Johannesburg aboard a South African Airways aircraft with registration number BBB712 .
“This afternoon, about 3.30pm, 90 Nigerians were deported from South Africa for committing immigration-related offences. Some of them were alleged to have been living in the country without the prerequisite documents.
“They were received by the appropriate agencies including the police and profiled before being allowed to depart to their respective destinations.
Alabi added that “this deportation is coming barely three days after another batch of 258 Nigerians were deported from Libya.
The deportees who arrived the cargo section of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos at about 10.00pm aboard an Airbus A333-200 and were received at the Hajj Terminal by the National Emergency Management Agency, narrated how they were brutalised like animals in Libya.
Narrating his ordeal, Mr Akhere Ken, one of the deportees from Edo State, said he had been in detention in Libya in the past one year after he was arrested on board a boat while trying to cross the Mediterranean sea to Italy.
He said about 100 of them were cramped into a room not enough to accommodate 20 people with resultant suffocation to death of one inmate almost every week
Diaspora Newsletter recalls that South Africa had also on Feb. 28 sent back home 97 Nigerians for committing various offences wherein 95 of them were males and two females. (DN)
