The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on Friday, said a total of 6,672 Nigerians willingly returned from Libya from January 6 through to December 28.

• According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the Director General of NEMA, Mustapha Maihajja, made this known while receiving another batch of 257 Nigerians who arrived from Libya.
• Maihajja appraised the efforts of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) at continuing the repatriation exercise even during the festive season.
• Represented by the Southwest Coordinator of NEMA, Suleiman Yakubu, he enjoined the returnees to join hands with various government agencies to tackle the problem of human trafficking in the country.
• He said they should assist the government in identifying the traffickers who had lured and deceived many young Nigerians.
• Maihajja assured them that government would treat all information with utmost confidentiality and secrecy needed.
• He also allayed their fears of facing spiritual consequences for exposing these evil persons, stressing that they had a duty to educate the public on what they went through in the volatile North African country.
• The fresh returnees comprised 152 adult females, 82 adult males, nine children and 14 infants, with one having a medical case.
• The returnees arrived barely 24 hours after another batch of 157 Nigerians landed in the country from Libya where they had been stranded enroute Europe.

What we think: Its a good initiative bringing back stranded Nigerians, especially those who may have been sold into slavery. Commendable indeed.

It shows that the government is not acting adversely to the welfare of it’s citizens abroad.

Yet, there are reason(s) these people decided to “seek greener pastures” and those reasons need to be identified and resolved so, these youth do not regret their return, in the long run.

Omoleye Omoruyi

Omoleye Omoruyi… an apprentice web/game developer, novelist, sensitive to happenings in the world. Meet him @Lord_rickie on Twitter/Instagram