FG wants global convention followed as US deports 85 Nigerians

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, stated this when the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Richard Mills Jr., paid her a courtesy visit at the Tafawa Balewa House, Abuja, according to a statement on Sunday by her media aide, Magnus Eze.

She urged the US to follow laid down procedure on deportation of persons in repatriating immigrants in their country.

“With the new administration in the US, we want a situation where there will be commitments. If there will be repatriation, we want dignified return.

“At the moment, we’re told that about 201 Nigerian nationals are in US immigration camps, and about 85 have been cleared for deportation.

“Will there be any way of ameliorating their pains? This has been of great concerns to not just Nigerian nationals in the US but family members in Nigeria who depend on them for survival, children whose school fees are paid for by these diasporas.

“We are asking as a country whether they will be given ample time to handle their assets or will they just be bundled into planes and repatriated? It will really be traumatic especially for those who had not committed any violent crime,” the minister said.

Highlighting that Nigerians in the US deserved dignified repatriation, the minister asked the US government to find a way of ameliorating the trauma of those to be deported including allowing them ample opportunity to retrieve their assets in America.

In the course of the meeting, the US Ambassador, Mills said: “Those to be repatriated would be dropped in Lagos.

“The first group will be convicted prisoners. Those who committed crimes and are in US prisons. Some of them are those who have clearly violated US immigration laws. They appealed but were denied yet they are still in the US. They have committed immigration crime, people who have been ordered to leave” he said.