2 July 2009
Lagos — Ninety-six Nigerians deported from various parts of Europe, yesterday, arrived the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos.
The deportees, comprising 50 males, 25 females and 21 infants were flown from Dublin, Ireland, aboard a chartered aircraft.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the deportees were accompanied by over 150 escorts from their countries of deportation.
Airport sources told NAN that the deportees were sent packing for various immigration offences. After necessary documentation, the deportees were allowed to go home.
There has been a spate of deportation of Nigerians from various parts of Europe and America in recent times because of the global economic meltdown.
In June, 130 Nigerians in various parts of Europe including Spain, Austria and Italy, were also deported. It would be recalled that in April, 25 Nigerians were deported from Ireland on a special charter flight to Lagos.
The 11 men, five women and nine children were deported as part of an operation carried out in conjunction with Frontex - the European Union Border Management Agency.
The flight stopped over in Madrid, where it picked up more Nigerians being deported from other European countries.
The charter flight landed in Dublin carrying 45 deportees from the United Kingdom and seven from Switzerland and Germany before heading for Lagos.
The Irish Refugee Council had called for one of the deportees to be allowed to return to Ireland to care for her two young sons, who were born in Dublin and have Irish citizenship.
The 32-year-old woman, who had been living in Mosney, Co Meath, with the children, aged 2 and nine months, was deported after her application for asylum was denied.
The children's father, a Nigerian (41), had been in Ireland for 11 years and holds an Irish passport. He had requested that he wanted the woman to be allowed to return to care for the children, who will live with him in the interim. "They need their mother," he said.
The children's parents are not married. A spokeswoman for the Irish Refugee Council said the youngest boy is still being breast-fed. She called for the children's mother to be allowed to return to Ireland immediately "on humanitarian grounds."
The Residents Against Racism group had also protested the deportation outside the Garda National Immigration Bureau in Dublin , claiming the deportations were "handled in an extremely heavy way."
The Garda had earlier on December 12, 2008 deported 56 Nigerians from Ireland.
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