We don't have to convey positive message all the time.
-----Original Message-----
From: AAM (African Association of Madison)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kumapayi, Ray
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 10:05 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Anywhere but Home
Bo Bimi: What positive message is this conveying?
-----Original Message-----
From: Bo Bimi [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 10:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Anywhere but Home
NEW AGE
4/29/03
Dying to leave Nigeria (1)
By EMMANUEL ONYEE MAYAH
Monday, December 7 1998 went down as a day of national shame when a
German
registered aircraft touched down at the Murtala Mohammed International
Airport Lagos, carrying 146 Nigerians, all of them in handcuffs.
The aircraft, an airbus 310 with registration number D-ADLM and
special call sign H.L.F. 917 landed at the D-Finger of the airport and,
not
without some fuss, began to discharge its human cargo; 146 deportees
from
Germany who were accompanied on the flight by 40 German policemen.
As they were herded to the airport security cells, spectators feasted
on the deportees many of whom were arrested in Bonn, Berlin, Stutgatt
and
other German cities in an operation said to have lasted one month.
Information on the trail of the deportees had it that the authorities in
their host country had set out a substantial part of security vote to
create
a special unit of combined police and immigration officers to tackle
what
had come to be known as the Nigerian menace. Indeed before the big haul
of
146 `unwanted Nigerians', the German authorities had in June of the same
year deposited 60 Nigerians at the Lagos airport, using a chartered
skyjet
DC-10 aircraft with registration number V2-LER. The seriousness of the
exercise was such that even though the 60 deportees were manacled on the
flight, 70 German security men escorted them, to prevent them from
escaping.
The Germans obviously did not want to take chances, given that 17
Nigerians,
out of the 77 arrested, had managed to escape before the deportation
date.
And perhaps to compensate for their loss, the German authorities
vigorously
smoked out 40 more
Nigerians, manacled and deported them with dispatch a few days later,
thus bringing to 246 the number of Nigerians ejected from that country
in
only three operations. Statistics since the early 1990s show that no
other
country in the world has had its citizens treated like vermin in
foreign lands. The Germans are not the only ones with a special squad
created to hunt down Nigerians perceived as criminals, illegal aliens or
both.
NewAge enquiries revealed that similar mechanisms solely devised to
rout Nigerians exist in countries like Spain, Netherlands, Italy,
Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Belgium, Canada and the USA.
In the morning of November 25, 2002 Spain deported 44 Nigerians,
bringing to 375 the number of Nigerians so repatriated in 11 months. The
figure shot up to 412 with the deportation of another 37 the following
month. Statistics available to NewAge show that 609 Nigerians met with a
similar fate in 1998, 434 in 1999, 473 in 2000 and 298 in 2001.
According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, the Nigerian deportees,
mainly
young men and women, were deported for offences including fraud,
prostitution, human trafficking and drug offences. Among them were two
Nigerian women who the Spanish authorities were so much in a hurry to
get
off their soil that they left their babies behind in that country.
The same week Spain deported 44 Nigerians, Republic of Ireland
repatriated 25 Nigerians for similar offences. That country deported 39
more
Nigerians in 2000 and in 2001 entered a controversial pact with the
Nigerian
government to break down diplomatic barriers and smoothen the way for
the
repatriation of about 2,000 Nigerian asylum seekers in exchange for an
£8
million aid package. Amid the raging controversy, the statistics tumbled
out
that in 1998 and 1999, Britain deported 55,120 African asylum seekers of
which Nigerians were 22,400. According to the Detainee Helpline Support
Unit
(DHSU), a non-governmental organisation based in the UK, 13,100 were
repatriated in 1998 and 9,200 the following year. For months and years,
these Nigerians were held at various detention camps and prisons,
particularly the Jones Lay Home at Gatwick and Heathrow Airport
detention
camps.
The preponderance of Nigerians turning up like a bad penny in every
criminal and immigration case has led to the argument in Nigeria that
some
of the crimes blamed on Nigerians in Britain are actually committed by
West
African nationals carrying Nigerian passports. One immigration officer
in
Lagos said many of the deportees could not speak any of the Nigerian
languages, neither did they have known addresses, and that explains
their
rejection of such deportees each time they are repatriated to Nigeria.
However, in a counter argument, immigration officials in UK say they
are convinced these illegal immigrants are Nigerians, that "what the
Nigerian detainees do is to start speaking in tongues as soon as you put
them on the plane.
"And when they refuse to speak their local languages when we arrive
Nigeria, we have no choice than to bring them back to Britain. But what
we
now do is to detain them perpetually till they are fed up and decide on
their own volition to go back to Nigeria." Such unpredictable wiles of
detainees to resist deportation probably pushed the Germans to adopt a
more
aggressive approach like the use of manacles and sedatives. While
Germany
deported no less than 246 Nigerians in 1998, it repatriated 168 in 1999
and
113 in 2000. And between 2000 and 2001, the Nigeria Immigration Service
recorded that 17,992 Nigerians were repatriated from various countries
across the world.
Of this number, 288 were from the Netherlands, 126 from Sweden, 203
from Belgium, 47 from Ukraine and 113 from Israel. According to the
Nigerian Ambassador to Israel, Dr. George Obiozor, Nigerians were
"abscondees from pilgrimages. They have been doing this abscondment for
so
long; and for a country in a constant state of war, any undocumented
alien
is viewed as a security risk". It was further gathered that upon arrival
in
the Holy Land these Nigerians destroy their passports and when arrested
by
the police, they claim to be refugees from Liberia or Sierre-Leone.
Today the conduct of Nigerians in Israel pales into insignificance to
the vice of Nigerian young women in Italy, a place now seen as a byword
for sexual iniquity in social discourse. Both in number and frequency,
Italy remains in the lead of large-scale eviction of Nigerians, mostly
vice
girls and pimps seen as the major arteries feeding the network of
international sex trade in Europe. Indeed the mass deportation of
Nigerian
women from Italy started in 1997 but peaked in late 1999. Ever since,
the
Murtala Muhammed International Airport has become the location for a
reality
television where Nigerian prostitutes deported from Italy can make
anything
happen.
Between March 1999 and April 2001, a total of 1,136 Nigerian girls
were deported from Italy, according to Mrs. Titi Atiku, chairperson of
Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF). For
example in December 1999, 150 Nigerian vice girls were flown home from
Italy
under tight security. The deportation, on a chartered Alitalia Flight,
brought to 308 the number of such Nigerian women so deported in four
months,
in batches of 64,19,75 and 150 respectively. In March of the same year,
60
Nigerian ladies, escorted by 20 Italian police officers, were
repatriated;
and in April 47 girls and 17 men suffered the same fate.
As more Nigerians in Italy were linked to sex slavery, women
trafficking, advance fee fraud and drug trafficking, the deportation
exercise intensified in December 2000 when another set of 166 Nigerians
comprising 111 women and 55 men were flown home. Similarly, 403 girls
were
deported between January and June 2001, with 3,000 more held in Italian
prisons, awaiting repatriation, according to WOTCLEF. Invariably, the
Italian police were unrelenting the following year, deporting a total of
658
Nigerian girls. Information available to NewAge reveals that with the
several deportations made last year, Italy is still purging itself of
undesirable elements from Nigeria and only last month repatriated 84
vice
girls, two drug traffickers, and two human traffickers, using a
chartered
BLU PANARAMA aircraft.
Some of the Nigerians were rounded up on the streets of Italy while
others
were picked up from their homes. Meanwhile, neighbouring European
countries
were not sitting idle; Spain alone deported 481 girls between February
and
November 2002; 59 were sent home from Netherlands, six from Ireland and
18
from Switzerland.
It has been argued that the economic, political cultural and fiscal
policies of successive governments in Nigeria, built on political
upheavals,
deceit and instability to say nothing of mismanagement and chronic
corruption, are factors responsible for anywhere-but-home instincts of
Nigerians, young and old.
But these sentiments cut no ice in these foreign lands, just as they
have never won Nigerians any sympathy. Especially in the United States,
where the Nigerian Consul-General in New York has revealed that since
1998
an average of five Nigerians are deported a week and about 10
apprehended
every month for a variety of crimes ranging from credit card fraud to
drug
dealing. Indeed, the continued resolve of the US Immigration and
Naturalisation Service (INS) to clamp down on Nigerians on the wrong
side of
the law becomes more manifest in the fact that notwithstanding its
deportation of 66 Nigerians on Sunday September 30, 2001, 50 in February
2002, 131 between March and July, 134 in October, 63 in December and 79
in
February 2003, the US still found it necessary to join forces with
Canada to
trap and evict more Nigerians.
Both governments, in January 1999, leased a jet dubbed Con Air and
flew 60 handcuffed Nigerians back to Lagos. The sky service jet with
five
Nigerian criminals and five escort officers left Pearson Airport in
Canada
for the US to pick up 55 other cons for the trip home. The Nigerians
were
handcuffed and some fitted with leg-irons during the 24-hour flight. The
move became necessary after commercial airlines had refused to fly the
Nigerians because of the potential danger in the exercise.
It was gathered that the Canadian government paid $20,000 for five
seats on the flight while the US coughed out $275,000 to lease the
skyservice in addition to providing 25 more security escorts.
The use of security officers in the deportation of Nigerians
notwithstanding, the exercise is hardly without incident, sometimes
resulting in casualties. A case in point is the death of Miss Semira
Adamu, the 20-year-old Nigerian who died of brain haemorrhage aboard a
Sabena Airline flight while being deported by the Belgian authorities.
She
was shackled hand and feet, with her face covered as the police tried to
force her aboard the aircraft. Passengers on the flight watched in
horror as
Semira struggled and subsequently fell into a coma. She was taken to a
hospital where she died hours later.
--- End ---
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