26 Nigerians deported from Germany

A total of 26 Nigerians were again deported to Nigeria from Germany.

The deportees arrived Murtala Muhammed International Airport on Wednesday at about 12noon  a chartered deportation flight.

The deportees comprised 25 adult males and one aged female.

No government agency working in the area of migration was on hand to receive the deportees, as was seen in the case of Nigerians brought back from South Africa.

Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State had approved a cash grant of N1 million each for all Imo indigenes evacuated from South Africa, while telecommunications company MTN announced a support package of N100,000 and N50,000 worth of airtime for every Nigerian repatriated in the first batch of the Federal Government’s evacuation exercise.

Officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) and other government agencies received the evacuees at the airport, but all that was lacking in the case of the deportees. Rejected abroad, they returned to a more inhuman reception in their fatherland.  They appear more like pariahs at home than they were in the foreign country they had travelled to for greener pastures. This has been the pattern for more than seven years that our correspondent started monitoring and reporting deportation exercises.

The deportees were dumped in front of the Cargo area of the airport without any support to reach their families.

Some of them scrambled around to get mobile SIM cards but couldn’t obtain one because they had no NIN number.

Many of them were seen looking sombre and at a loss over how to reach their loved ones. They were left to their own fate in the midst of ravenous airport hustlers desperate to fleece them of whatever little they had on them.

Aside from  the psychological and emotional devastation they had suffered, the returnees also had a running battle with the scorching weather conditions that never considered they were just coming back to the country after many years of being  abroad for greener pastures.

Many of them were seen sweating profusely, with some pulling their clothes, and pouring water on their heads because of the intensity of the heat.

“Am I going to survive in this kind of environment?” one of the deportees asked rhetorically.