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Tag: Mediterranean

  • Child adrift… Infants sacrificed on Mediterranean sea

    Child adrift… Infants sacrificed on Mediterranean sea

    • From Libya to Italy, Nigerians subject their babies to untimely death crossing the Mediterranean

    • Hellish life of minors, pregnant women in destination countries

    • Eleven children die every week on water migration route – UNICEF

    Itohan remembers Goodseed, her nephew, like her secret shame. She remembers his dying eyes and their weak, uncertain light. She remembers the rattle in his throat as he choked on salt water and slipped from her grasp into the Mediterranean Sea. Under sheeted rain, violent waves hushed the three-year-old to sleep eternally in the deep. Ten years after he drowned, his muffled howls echo through her consciousness like a falsetto of savage death.

    Goodseed haunts her, asleep and awake. He died because she let go. But there was no way she could save him. “His mother drowned in the hull of the ship. She was five months pregnant. We hadn’t eaten in two days, so she was too weak to swim. She gave me her son before the boat capsized. She was too tired to swim. I was very tired, too, but I held on to Goodseed. Then, someone tried to jump on me to stay afloat. My hands were tired. I could not move the left part of my body, and I was carrying him with my left hand. My head felt numb. I let go,” she said, adding that she said a tearful prayer for him and watched him drown.

    Like a shrouded figure at the prow of a ship, Itohan groped helplessly into her past, craning as a mariner would, into the fog of the travelled distance, perhaps to see the storms she left behind.

    The 37-year-old left Edo for Lagos with Woju, her elder sister, in late 2011. Three months later, they departed Lagos for Libya through Africa’s desert corridor, Agadez. Braving molestation by randy and racist smugglers, among other desert elements, they arrived in Tripoli, Libya, on May 16, 2013. They exhausted their savings paying for their passage and buying reprieve from smugglers who persistently sought to sleep with them.

    In Libya, they had no money and no job, so they had to offer sex for money. “We slept with everybody: black Africans, Arabs, Europeans, and so on. We needed money for treatment. It took us a few months to get rid of the gonorrhea in our system, but that didn’t prevent us from hustling (commercial sex work).”

    Eventually, Woju had a child with a client. “He was a married man, but he could not marry Woju because his family would disown him. When she got pregnant by him, he begged her to terminate it. But she refused. Then he begged her to keep it a secret. He said his people would kill her and the child if they got to know he had a child by a black African. He didn’t accept the child.

    In October 2013, life became even more challenging. They were attacked in their house, robbed, and raped. “Men came to sleep with us without paying for it. At times they came in groups of four and five to rape us. Sometimes, four men would sleep with you and they would pay for one person.” Eventually, the sisters decided to leave for Italy. They contracted the services of smugglers. “We could only manage to pay $2,000, but they said we still owed them $3,500. They offered to take us to Italy on the agreement that we would do whatever work they secured for us to pay off our debt.”

    The Mediterranean crossing

    In June 2014, they embarked on the perilous journey. “There was a big crack across the boat. It looked like it would sink at any moment, but we were past caring. We were desperate to make the crossing on anything. Even a bathing bowl would do at that point.”

    The atmosphere of the boat’s hull was very hot because of the engine. “We thought Goodseed was sleeping, but he was having trouble breathing. We screamed for help, and the Moroccans aboard helped me and my sister to the deck. As soon as we got to the deck, my sister started vomiting blood and saliva. They became scared and hauled her back into the hull where she died alongside several other women and children, including two pregnant women,” she said.

    Upon her arrival in Italy, Itohan suffered a severe bout of pneumonia that rendered her useless for seven months of her life. “I told God that it would be painful if I survived the storms of the Mediterranean Sea only to die of ordinary pneumonia at my destination,” she said. Two years after she got to Italy, she “hustled hard and saved up money” doing commercial sex work and occasionally working part-time as a cook in a hostel owned by a Nigerian madame. Now, in the United Kingdom, Itohan admitted that, “Life is hard everywhere. I know better now. But it is still easier to work hard and make it in Europe than in Nigeria,” she said.

    Itohan’s experience highlights the dangers often faced by many irregular migrants making travelling by sea. For instance, eight of the girls she travelled with, including her sister, Woju and her three-year-old son, Goodseed, perished during the Mediterranean crossing.

    Like Itohan, Timothy Dili watched helplessly as his loved ones drowned in the sea. In June 2023, a ferocious storm tore through the boat carrying his wife and their infant daughter as they attempted to cross the Mediterranean. Dili clung to the wreckage through the storm, his heart breaking as he saw his family vanish beneath the waves. Both Itohan and Dili’s experiences are but fragments of a wider narrative of tragedy suffered by Nigerian migrants making the dangerous crossing on the Mediterranean in search of greener pastures abroad.

    Deadly voyage: 289 kids died crossing the Mediterranean in 2023

    The Mediterranean Sea has no doubt become a graveyard for irregular migrants, children inclusive. A recent report by UNICEF highlights this grim reality: nearly 11,600 children attempted the crossing in the first six months of 2023, many unaccompanied or separated from their families.

    In the first half of 2023, the United Nations (UN) recorded the deaths of 289 children on the Mediterranean crossing—an unfathomable number, double that of the previous year – the UN children’s agency UNICEF said, as it called for expanded safe, legal and accessible pathways for children to seek protection in Europe.

    UNICEF’s Global Lead on Migration and Displacement, Verena Knaus, said the true figures are likely to be higher as many shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean leave no survivors or go unrecorded.

    According to her, the number of children who lost their lives while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe doubled in the first half of 2023, compared to the same period in 2022.

    In the first six months of 2023, UNICEF estimated that 11,600 children made the crossing — again, nearly twice as many as in the same period in 2022, she said. According to UNICEF, in the first three months of 2023, around 3,300 children — 71 percent of all children arriving in Europe on the central Mediterranean route – were recorded as unaccompanied or separated.

    “These children need to know they are not alone. World leaders must urgently act to demonstrate the undeniable worth of children’s lives, moving beyond condolences to the resolute pursuit of effective solutions,” said Knaus.

    Nearly 100 disappeared or dead in early 2024 – IOM

    Against the backdrop of UNICEF’s dreary disclosure, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) disclosed recently that about 100 people have died on the Central and Eastern Mediterranean routes since the beginning of 2024.

    The toll, disclosed IOM, is over twice as high as the figure for the same period of 2023, the deadliest year for migrants at sea in Europe since 2016.

    This was made known as the IOM’s Director General, Amy Pope, attended the Italy-Africa Conference in Rome to discuss solutions aimed at protecting migrants.

    The Conference, “A Bridge for Common Life,” featured the participation of more than 20 heads of state and Prime Ministers, including the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Several United Nations agencies, the EU, and the World Bank were also represented, along with leaders from across Africa.

    World leaders must act with urgency. UNICEF’s global lead on migration and displacement, Verena Knaus, emphasised the need for expanded safe, legal, and accessible pathways for children seeking protection. The Italy-Africa Conference, attended by international dignitaries, underscored the necessity of unified and sustainable mechanisms to protect migrants. “Even one death is one too many,” declared Amy Pope, Director General of IOM. The rising toll of deaths and disappearances calls for a comprehensive approach, ensuring that children and their families can pursue safer, dignified journeys.

    “The latest record of deaths and disappearances is a stark reminder that a comprehensive approach that includes safe and regular pathways – a key strategic pillar for IOM – is the only solution that will benefit migrants and states alike,” said Pope.

    ‘Find my baby’

    Among the survivors rescued from the sea, the story of Joseph, a six-month-old baby from Guinea, establishes the perils faced by child migrants. Rescued by the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms, Joseph died hours after he was saved.

    “Where is my baby? I lose my baby. Find my baby, find my baby!” his mother pleaded, in a heartbreaking scene that further highlights the dangers of irregular sea travel.

    Invisible shipwrecks leave indelible marks on the collective conscience. Recent data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reveals an increase in migrant deaths, with three invisible shipwrecks in the last six weeks alone. These tragedies often go unrecorded. In Antayla, Türkiye, the bodies of seven migrants washed ashore, believed to be from a group of 85 who disappeared after setting sail from Lebanon.

    Autopsies on the bodies of 26 Nigerian teenage girls recovered from the Mediterranean in November 2017 confirmed that they drowned. The bodies of the girls, aged between 14 and 18, were brought to the southern Italian port of Salerno by the Spanish ship Cantabria.

    An investigation was opened due to fears they may have been sexually abused and killed. Prof Antonello Crisci, a medic who worked on the postmortems, said the girls died from drowning after the dinghies they were travelling in sank.

    “There were no signs that they had been raped or physically abused,” he said. “They most likely couldn’t swim.”

    The bodies were recovered by Cantabria, which works as part of the EU’s Sophia anti-trafficking operation, from two shipwrecks,  23 from one and three from the other.

    One of the women also suffered a “hemorrhagic shock” due to a liver wound, and two were pregnant, the doctor added.

    According to the IOM, women face a greater risk of death when crossing the Mediterranean. On boats, women and children are often placed below deck or in the middle to protect them during the crossing. However, if the ship runs into distress, this makes it more difficult to escape.

    Other anecdotal factors such as weaker swimming skills, heavier clothing and traveling with children reportedly lead to a higher risk of drowning. Since the IOM began collecting data about missing migrants in 2014, there have been 1,234 recorded deaths of women migrants. More than half of these fatalities were linked to attempts to cross the Mediterranean.

    The actual figure of deaths of migrant women is likely higher because of the absence of data about the dead. According to the IOM Missing Migrants Project, less than a third of the records of dead or missing migrants in its database include any information about the sex of the deceased person.

    A system’s cruelty

    The “irregular migrant” is typically characterised as a young, able-bodied man, and statistics show that it is predominantly men who attempt dangerous migrant routes. Data about women traveling along irregular migrant paths is scarce. According to a report by WatchTheMed Alarm Phone, a 24/7 phone hotline for people in distress in the Mediterranean Sea, the little information about women migrants is often framed around gendered stereotypes of being “subordinate, passive victims who lack political agency.”

    The survivors of these tragic crossings often face further torment. Italy’s pact with Libya, designed to stem the flow of migrants, has been condemned as inhuman. Rights groups argue that returning migrants to Libya exposes them to lawless detention centers, where abuses abound. The IOM reported thousands of Africans being sold in “slave markets,” thus underscoring the urgency for humane policies.

    Italy’s interior minister, Marco Minniti, defended the controversial deal with Libya, asserting that managing migratory flows is essential to prevent human traffickers from exploiting the vulnerable. However, this stance has drawn sharp criticism from human rights advocates who argue for more humanitarian solutions. The Italy-Africa Conference highlighted the need for collective efforts to address these tragedies, urging countries to provide more funds, logistical support, and interventions to safeguard migrants.

    Children and women face a greater risk of death when crossing the Mediterranean. On boats, they are often placed below deck or in the middle to protect them during the crossing. However, if the ship runs into distress, this makes it more difficult to escape. Other anecdotal factors such as weaker swimming skills, heavier clothing and traveling with children reportedly lead to a higher risk of drowning.   

    Fate of pregnant women, nursing mothers after the crossing

    Meredith Ajibo, a 38-year-old, recalled the trials of making the crossing as a pregnant woman. Ajibo’s story begins in Benin, Edo State, where she fled from “generational poverty and an abusive lover,” seeking solace and safety. She travelled to Libya, where she toiled for 13 months, as a sex slave of a terrifying Nigerian madame. Pregnant with the child of a Libyan client who had broken his promise to marry her, Ajibo set her sights on Italy, soon after “working off” her debt to her madame.

    She embarked on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, pregnant with her unborn child until she got to Italy. In Italy, she was received by the Centre for Extraordinary Reception (CAS) in Molise, where she arrived in her third trimester. Despite her state, Ajibo had it in her mind that she was coming to Italy to engage in sex work. “There are men who pay for sex with pregnant women,” she said, adding that in Libya, it’s a very lucrative hustle.

    Molise, with its picturesque landscapes, however, proved to be an unwelcoming host. Rejected by a local motel where she sought work, Ajibo found temporary refuge with a widower who hired her as a housekeeper. His intentions were far from noble, seeking to exploit her vulnerability. Ajibo played along. Even in her pregnant state, she used sex to negotiate her way to a semblance of social and economic security.

    The harsh reality of living in Molise drove Ajibo to seek greener pastures in Spain, only to face deportation back to Nigeria. From Nigeria, she made her way to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where she currently works as a bar tender.

    Ajibo’s story is not unique as many Nigerian women experience similar travails, from the dehumanising stereotypes that paint them as both victims and criminals to the systemic racism they experience after crossing the sea into Europe. The promise of rehabilitation and protection often feels like a mirage, as many women choose the anonymity of the CAS over the stigmatisation of state-funded programs.

    The treatment of these women is rooted in colonial notions of race and sexuality, perpetuating the dangerous eroticisation of African women and girls. Ajibo revealed that she knew several Nigerian and other African women with teenage daughters exchanged sex for money in Europe, “even from within our temporary shelters after we were rescued from the sea,” she said.

    Some native Italian and Spanish men, for instance, have a thing for Nigerian women and girls, even among immigration staff and social workers. “They are obsessed with our bodies,” said Ajibo. “Consequently, their wives consider us as threats and become hostile. Even the unmarried women too. So, it becomes difficult to get decent work. Many of us have to depend on the little stipend and provisions we are given initially by shelter authorities. We have to sell our bodies for money,” she said.

    A case for economic reintegration

    In December 2016, the European Union Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) launched the EU-IOM joint initiative in 14 African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.

    In Nigeria, it was launched in May 2017 with the aim of helping stranded migrants in Libya. As part of the reintegration and support programme, IOM organised a workshop on business skills and cooperatives for returned migrants in Lagos state. Returnees were invited to Lagos and lodged in a hotel for the four-day training course.

    “The main purpose of this reintegration, support and this business skills training is to give them an alternative – to stay back and resolve one of the push factors, which is the economic aspect,” Abraham Tamrat, IOM’s programme manager, told Al Jazeera. “We also provide them with economic reintegration that will resolve the employment-related challenge that might have pushed them from the very beginning to follow irregular migration,” said Tamrat.

    IOM budgeted for just 3,000 migrants, but the number of returnees since 2017 is 6,500. Tamrat said it won’t affect the programme. “What IOM did in response to that in Nigeria is to massively upscale its staff capacity, so we have triple the staff capacity we used to have before, and the support for Nigeria is about 50 million euros but it will go beyond that now.”

    Training on how to start and sustain a business in Nigeria was also rolled out, with the IOM collaborating with the government’s Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).

    “We need to help them identify their area of strength, their passion and be able to help them develop businesses in that line, so that as business go on the challenges of business will not overpower them,” SMEDAN representative Sola Dawodu said.

    Nigeria’s policy interventions

    Nigeria, supported by the IOM and the European Union (EU), has adopted a national migration policy. This policy provides a legal framework for monitoring and regulating migration, ensuring proper data collection, diaspora mobilization, border management, and the humane treatment of migrants, IDPs, and asylum seekers, with civil society playing a crucial role.

    A survey by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) highlights major trafficking routes in Nigeria, including states like Edo, Kano, and Lagos, and border areas near Benin, Cameroon, and Niger. Despite the risks, many Nigerians continue to migrate without proper documentation, facing harsh treatment and deportation when caught.

    In response to the conditions in Libya, the Nigerian government, through the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), repatriates stranded citizens and engages them in skill acquisition programs like shoe-making and tailoring. Policies are being developed to protect citizens and economically empower the youth to reduce migration desperation.

    However, travel migration expert Olumide Akinduro warns that these measures are insufficient without addressing the root causes of migration. Push factors such as unemployment, poverty, political instability, and conflicts like the Niger-Delta crisis and Boko Haram insurgency force people to migrate. Pull factors like the prospect of higher wages abroad also attract migrants. Many young Nigerians migrate in search of better lives, despite the associated dangers, including modern slavery in Libya.

    The children left behind

    There is no gainsaying the Mediterranean’s relentless toll is most profoundly felt by the youngest victims. Children like the three-month-old baby girl airlifted to Malta, or those among the 62 rescued off Cape Greco, Cyprus, bear the scars of their harrowing experiences. For those who survive, the journey traumatises them, a burden they carry into their new lives in Europe.

    Since 2014, more than 4,000 fatalities have been recorded annually on migratory routes worldwide; 2023 marked the deadliest year with more than 8,000 deaths recorded, marking a decade of documenting migrant deaths. The number of deaths recorded, however, still represent only a minimum estimate because the majority of migrant deaths around the world go unrecorded thus highlighting the issue of migrant fatalities and the consequences for families left behind, particularly the need to assess the risks of irregular migration and to design policies and programmes to make migration safer.

    For the minors who survive, their new lives herald a series of hardships and constraints further accentuating their pitiful circumstances. Many adolescents, for instance, report being forced into sexual slavery, unpaid labour, among other forms of exploitation.

    Young migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa are some of the most vulnerable people on the move. But certain factors, especially additional education or the company of others as they travel, can make their journeys safer.

    Among those travelling less than three months on the Central Mediterranean route, an adolescent from sub-Saharan Africa with no education, travelling alone, faces the highest risk of exploitation – 89 per cent.

    If he or she travels in a group, the risk decreases substantially. Adding the further protective layer of secondary education, the risk goes down further, to 73 per cent.

    But even with these protective factors, young migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa are still in greater danger than those from other regions. An adolescent boy with the same characteristics (with secondary education, travelling in a group for less than three months), but from another region, is at substantially lower risk of exploitation, at 38 per cent.

    Over two thirds of sub-Saharan Africans aged 14–24 who travelled through Turkey reported being exploited there – compared with 15 per cent of adolescents and youth from other regions, according to a recent UNICEF report.

    Their fates affirm the need for safer migration pathways, for policies that protect rather than endanger.

    The stories of these children and their families demand urgent intervention by the global community to recognise the worth of every child’s life and move beyond sympathy to the implementation of effective and humane solutions.

    As the world grapples with the tragedy of migration, the narratives of loss serve as a poignant reminder of the stakes involved as governments and humanitarian groups urge world leaders, policymakers, and citizens, to strive for a world where every child migrant’s life is cherished and protected.

    Yet, the narrative of Nigerian women crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Europe is one of hardship and unyielding resolve. Their stories, like Itohan, Woju and Ajibo’s, resonate an urgent call to recognise the human faces behind the statistics and challenge the systems that perpetuate their suffering at home and abroad.

    For every Itohan, Dili, and Ajibo, who survived, there are their loved ones, among countless others, whose dreams ended in the cold embrace of the sea.

    In those final, agonising moments before she drowned, for instance, Woju frantically entrusted her son, Goodseed, in care of her sister, Itohan. Few minutes afterwards, Itohan would watch three-year-old Goodseed slip from her grasp into the Mediterranean deep.

    Then, there was Dili, whose eyes locked on his daughter, in her final moment, her tiny arms flailing against the merciless waves. The storm, in its fury, seemed to mock his helplessness, each swell  pulling her deeper into the abyss. All around, their co-travellers’ struggled to keep themselves and their loved ones afloat. But the sea was unyielding, its cold grip tightening around them, dragging them into its depths.

  • 60 migrants die in Mediterranean Sea, say survivors

    60 migrants die in Mediterranean Sea, say survivors

    At least 60 migrants have died after a rubber dinghy ran into trouble in the Mediterranean Sea, according to survivors.

    The 25 survivors were picked up by the Ocean Viking, a vessel operated by the humanitarian group SOS Méditerranée.

    They told their rescuers that they had set off from Zawiya on the Libyan coast several days before being rescued.

    The engine of the dinghy broke down after three days, leaving the boat adrift without food or water.

    The survivors explained that the victims included women and at least one child. They are believed to have died from dehydration and hunger, not drowning.

    SOS Méditerranée said the Ocean Viking team had spotted the dinghy, which set off last Friday, with binoculars on Wednesday and had staged a medical evacuation in cooperation with Italian coast guards.

    “The survivors were in very weak health condition” and were all under medical care.

    “Two of them, who were unconscious and in critical condition, had been flown to Sicily by helicopter for further treatment

    “The remaining 23 are still on board the Ocean Viking, along with more than 200 other migrants who were rescued from two other boats”

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    The vessel is heading for the port of Ancona, about four days away, but the team has requested a closer port of safety.

    “The people who were on the boat in distress, lost at sea for almost a week, went out of water and food very quickly, according to the survivors.

    “People died along the way. I met a man who lost his wife and one-and-a-half-year-old baby. The baby died on the first day, and the mother on the fourth day. They were from Senegal and had been in Libya for more than two years.” said an SOS Méditerranée spokeswoman on board the ship.

    The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said last week that 2023 was the deadliest year for migrants since records began a decade ago, with at least 8,565 people dying on migration routes worldwide.

    The UN agency said the figure was 20% up on the year before.

    Its report found that the Mediterranean crossing continued to be the most dangerous journey, with at least 3,129 deaths and disappearances during 2023 – the highest toll since 2017.

  • IMMIGRANTS: When the sea becomes a cemetery

    In the last one year not less than 1,000 Nigerian youths perished in the Mediterranean Sea; some were lost in the desert while numerous others were in various refugee camps in Libya in their quest for greener pasture. Sina Fadare, who encountered some of the returnees,’ writes that more is yet to be done to discourage this unprofitable journey

    ROSELINE  Omohodu could be described as a cat with nine lives. She has cheated death many times and was lucky to have, by the stroke of luck, escaped on each occasion the agent of death visited during her voyage on the Mediterranean Sea.

    She was about to get married to her heartthrob who was in the same vocation with her, cloth designing, in which they are cynosure of all eyes in the vicinity they are leaving in Ijaye area of Lagos State.

    After her training by one of the best fashion designers in Opebi area of Lagos State, Roseline teamed up with Kayode, her lover of four years, who actually introduced her to the job she later derived joy and sense of fulfilment.

    However a visit by one of her customers, simply called ‘Aunty Bimbo,’ who brought lucrative jobs for her, changed the course of her life. Bimbo, who claimed to have a boutique in Italy, was a big customer to her anytime she visited and within few months they became glued together.

    It was during one of her usual visits that the idea of going to Italy to become a notable fashion designer was sold to her and by the time she discussed with her would-be husband, who was sharing same shop with her, he was happy that at last opportunity has come their way to make it big outside the country.

    According to Roseline, Kayode did not think twice when he encouraged her that they should mop-up all they had, in terms of cash, to make the journey a successful one. “At the last moment, we were able to raise about N800, 000, which I gave aunty Bimbo to perfect all the travelling documents, excluding another N200, 000 which I changed to dollar on the eve of our departure from Nigeria.”

    It was a smooth journey from Nigeria to Libya where they were expected to cross the Mediterranean Sea through a big boat. This is where the sojourn to the world of unknown started for Roseline.

    After a lot of frustration and narrow escape from security officers, Bimbo eventually led her to the expected boat that would take her to the shore of Italy.  That was the last she saw her.

    “When I entered the boat, we were so plenty that l wondered if l had not willingly signed my death warrant. It was all a sea of heads because everything was dark and people just find a seat through the help of an agent with a touch light.”

    Roseline joined others and in the wee hour of the day the ship was in the middle of the sea to its destination. Suddenly there was commotion in the boat and heads were been knocked against each other in the full to capacity boat carrying about five hundred passengers. In the confusion that followed, she slipped to the ground.

    Roseline could not believe her imagination when faintly she was hearing a lot of noises and by the time she opened her eye, she was on a small hard bed at a refugee camp where she was carried to after their boat torpedoed on the sea. She was among the 10 survivors; others were drowned and became feast to the fishes on the high sea. Her survival at the sea gave her the second chance to tell her story.

    “For hours l did not know where l was, very weak and confused. I thought l was dreaming until a doctor came to give me an injection. That was when l realised l was not in a trance.”

    After three weeks at the refugee camp, Roseline and few others were sold by the Army officers who have captured a lot of immigrants on the sea to a woman who came to the camp often to buy people and resell them to farmers in the hinterland of Libya. There and then, Roseline’s second missionary journey into the unknown world commenced.

    “The experience l had on the cotton farm that l was sold to was better imagined than told.  I could not speak their language and none can speak English either; this compounded my problem. There was no dull moment. l could not bear the agony on the farm as a woman working for twelve hours a day with only little time to eat.

    “Suddenly my body could no longer cope and l fainted. That led me to another journey into what l will call the wilderness, which eventually paved way for my final exit from the trouble l put myself.”

    If Roseline was lucky, Hellen Efosa was not. She was lured to Libya with a promise of a better future where she was expected to work for a business woman who owned a big boutique, which later became a farce. She was lured to prostitution as she later knew when she got to Libya where she became a sex slave.

    “We are six in number sold from the refugee camp by the army. The woman who bought us also sold us to some guys who are like the yahoo boys in Nigeria. They are always smoking, drinking and had marathon sex with their victims

    “The house was like a big bungalow with a big garden, we were not allowed to come out. We only eat and subjected to marathon sex by any of the five boys in the house. When they are going out, they chained us to a big bed and a security officer was engaged to monitor our movement.

    “More annoying was that if any of us was on her period, her mouth was turned to depot of sperms in a brutal way.”

    Hellen lamented that as soon as any of them gives up due to stress from marathon sex, the body of such girls is dumped at a nearby dumping site at night and another replacement will come the following day through same source.

    “I was dumped like this one evening after l passed out due to marathon sex from five different men. A security officer who took me to the hospital said one of the scavengers on the refuse site reported the case to the police and it was in the hospital that l eventually regained consciousness.” she lamented

    Miss Chisom Johnson, who left Nigeria in 2014, was among the 120 Nigerians stranded in Libya who were brought home last November via Al Buraq air.

    She regretted her action of chasing the shadow outside the shores of the country, recalling that she was deceived that a job as a stylist was waiting for her in Germany

    According to her, “there are 20 of us in the team and we were promised that we would fly to Germany as stylists but after two weeks, we found ourselves in Niger Republic.

    She explained that after three weeks they were in Libya where their Madam told them that they cannot cross over but have to be prostitutes in order to refund her money which was N1.4 million.

    “I resorted to fervent prayers and pleaded with our Madam that it was a taboo in our family to prostitute because the consequence would be dire. She eventually agreed with me to work in a restaurant where l refunded her money

    “Immediately l finished paying her money, l started working on my own to get some money but my madam organised my kidnap and l was bailed by her with about N650, 000 and she doubled the amount and insisted that l must pay her N1.3 million which l did at last by doing all sorts of works.”

    Chisom, who was in tears, noted that his four years in search of greener pasture was a disaster and that she was lucky to have been returned home alive because others did not have the opportunity to tell their stories.

    “I want to beg those people who think that it was rosy over there to think twice; they should resist all temptations because they may not be lucky as we are. There is freedom in Nigeria; if you are hardworking; you can break through. Over there, there was no freedom and we cannot keep our money in the bank. This gave us out as prey to hoodlums who cashed in on our predicament to often rob us of our money with impunity.”

    The above tales of agony, frustration, slavery and death are the experience which Nigerian youths are passing through in their quest to go to Europe through illegal means.

    If the above victims were able to tell their stories, the 26 Nigerian girls that died in the Mediterranean Sea on November 3rd 2017 and thousands of others that were buried in hollow of the sea cannot.

    Speaking at the South City of Salerno, after a funeral was held for the victims, the Director UN Migration Agency IOM for Mediterranean, Federico Soda, pointed out that the 26 bodies were retrieved from the sea on Nov. 3rd by a Spanish rescue ship while 64 people were unaccounted for and feared lost.

    The Nation gathered that the Italian government has worked with the Libya authorities to block migrants from leaving the North Africans states, leading to the situation in which many perished in the sea and many refugees and migrants are trapped in  perilous conditions in Libya.

    According to IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, at least 2,242 people died trying to cross the Mediterranean sea from Jan 1 to Dec.2018. These immigrants passed through Central, Eastern and Western Mediterranean route. In 2017, 2,853 deaths were recorded.

    In 2016 about 181,436 illegal migrants from 11 countries from Africa with Nigeria accounting for 37,551 stormed European countries. In 2017, with a total of about 11,9369 illegal migrants, 18,158 are Nigerians and in 2018, with about 23,370 illegal migrants, 1,250 are Nigerians.

    Two schools of thought have emerged on the reason behind the alarming rate of Nigerian youths risking their lives by going to Europe in search of greener pasture through the Mediterranean and the desert.  The first school of thoughts heaped the blame on the alarming rate of unemployment among Nigerian youths, particularly university graduates, who are trooping out of the school without any job to fall on as a means of their livelihood.

    The other argued that the porosity of Nigerian borders gives room for all shady deals, which include human trafficking and illegal migration through some of the neigbouring countries like Republic of Benin and Niger.

    Speaking to The Nation, a human right activist, Comrade Mark Adebayo, put the blame squarely at the door step of the federal government that has bluntly refused to put in place a mechanism that will give jobs for teeming Nigerian youths who are frustrated after many years of graduation from the university.

    Adebayo argued that aside this,  all the security agencies that are saddled with the responsibility to monitor the nation’s borders have failed to live up to expectation and this has encouraged all internal saboteurs who are feeding fat on human trafficking to have a free day.

    Adebayo therefore called on the federal government to urgently put in place mechanism that will give employment opportunity to all those that have been airlifted home noting that aggressive enlightenment campaign should be embarked upon to discourage those who are tricked into this illegal journey.

    Perhaps irked by the alarming rate of migration through illegal sea route, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Nigeria, recently raised alarm that something urgent must be done to checkmate this ugly trend.

    Against this backdrop, in December 2018, IOM organised a training for government officials in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the availability of Migrant Resource Centre (MRC) to assist the intending travelers of the needed information

    The training was sponsored by the European Union (EU) within the framework of the “European Union Trust Fund and IOM initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in Nigeria.”

    Speaking at the occasion, Mr. Frantz Celestin, the IOM chief of Mission in Nigeria noted that it was expedient to organise the training at a time when the numbers of deaths and those suffering exploitation and abuse along the Central Mediterranean migration route are at an alarming rate.

    According to him, “It is worthy to note that thousands of Nigerian migrants are stranded in Libya, living in terrible conditions, with many desirous of the opportunity to return home.

    “From April 2017 to October 2018, over 10,000 Nigerian migrants stranded in Libya and Niger have been assisted by IOM to return to Nigeria.

    Celestin observed with dismay that many migrants have embarked on irregular migration with little or no accurate information about the legal migration process and the risks inherent in the journey.

    “Permit me to say that most of these migrants embarked on this perilous journey because they received little or no information about the legal migration process, the risks inherent in irregular migration, the living and working conditions, and the support and redress services available at destination countries.

    “In the absence of accurate information on legal migration procedures and requirements, risks of irregular migration, job advisories and general information and support on welfare and social protection, potential and returning migrants are bound to fall victim to fraudulent migration brokers/recruitment agencies, who usually capitalise on the vulnerabilities of their victims’ desire or ambition for exploitation.

    Celestin pointed out that the training was designed “To provide services for the empowerment and protection of migrants, staff of MRCs” as well as  build capacity of the participants on a wide range of issues, such as relevant laws and procedures relating to migration and migrants’ rights and responsibilities.” he said.

    However, equally worried, President Muhammadu Buhari explained that the situation on ground has called for concerted efforts from within and outside the country to curb the menace.

    The president, who disclosed this when he hosted Chairman of the African Union Commission, Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat, at the Presidential Villa, noted that the Lake Chad, which provided a means of livelihood to several millions of people in four countries- Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria- has now been reduced to ten per cent of its original size due to the impact of climate change.

    Buhari explained that “People who depended on the lake for fishing, farming, animal husbandry and many others have been thrown into dire straits. That is one of the reasons youths now dare the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean sea, to seek greener pastures in Europe. But helping to recharge Lake Chad will help a great deal in curbing irregular migration.”

    The President lamented that the size of the country and resources available places a lot of responsibilities on her shoulders, adding that all hands are on deck to curb the menace.

    Speaking recently in Ibadan, the Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has challenged the youths to look inward for their livelihood instead of embarking on a perilous journey on the sea.

    Dabiri-Erewa, who said that the Federal Government has put in place many openings and opportunities for empowerment, said in spite of the hopeless situation being painted of the country, irregular migration damaged the national reputation

    According to her, the dangers and risks involved in illegal migration are more than the problems one can possibly face in Nigeria. “If you go to see them, there is no human being that will not cry; but in spite of the efforts, many Nigerians are still languishing in Libya cells.”

    She lamented that “One girl said she was 14 years old and about 40 people have slept with her; they used men as slaves, they used them on the farms.

    “There are still underground cells we could not reach then; so, up till now, we still have many Nigerians in Libya cells.”

    While the people have the liberty to move from one place to the other, Dabiri-Erewa appealed to Nigerians not to go near those countries like Libya, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, “but if you want to go, go legally.”

    According to her, illegal migration is not purely a Nigerian problem, but that of the continent, as thousands of Africans stake their lives as they venture on a boat journey in search of what they think will be a better and easier living standard. “Unfortunately, it is a journey that begins with hope but ends with despair.

    “It is painful that Nigeria ranks highest in the statistics of irregular migration; communities have lost able bodied youths, valuable assets and properties to irregular migration,” she said.

  • 117 people feared dead after migrant boat sinks off Libya

     

    One hundred and seventeen people are feared to have drowned off the coast of Libya after a dinghy boat capsized in the Mediterranean, a spokesman for the UN’s migration agency (IOM) said on Saturday

    Three survivors who were rescued said there were 120 people on the boat, Flavio Di Giacomo said.

    “There are therefore 117 missing people including 10 women and 2 children (one was just 2 months old),” the spokesman wrote on Twitter.

    He added that many of the migrants on board were from West Africa, but there were also about 40 Sudanese on board, according to those who survived.

    The survivors were rescued by the Italian coastguard on Friday and brought to the island of Lampedusa.

    The coastguard had originally said just 20 people were on board the boat, which found itself in distress 50 nautical miles (92.6 kilometres) north-east of Tripoli.

    Di Giacomo later told Italian media that the incident could be a much worse tragedy.

    “They told us that 120 people were on the dinghy that set out from Libya on Thursday night.

    READ ALSO: Dozens of migrants found dead on Mediterranean Sea

    “After 10 to 11 hours at sea, the boat began deflating and started to sink. The people fell into the sea and drowned,” Di Giacomo said

    Since Italy has largely closed its ports to migrants, fewer and fewer of them are arriving from Libya. However, people are still dying on the dangerous crossing.

    Since the beginning of 2019, no fewer than 83 people have been killed in the Mediterranean, according to the IOM. In the same period last year, there were 199 deaths.

    “As long as Europe’s ports remain open, as long as someone helps the smugglers, unfortunately the smugglers continue to do business and continue killing,” Italy’s right-wing Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said.

    Since Italy’s new populist government decided in June to close its ports to migrant rescue charities, EU governments have clashed on how to handle incoming asylum seekers from North Africa.

    Rome’s hardline stance left two German charity rescue boats with dozens of migrants stranded for weeks in the Mediterranean until eight EU nations agreed to take them in.(dpa/NAN)

  • Two children die after migrant boat sinks

    Two children died after a boat carrying migrants sank just 50 meters off Turkey’s western coast near Bodrum on Monday, the coastguard said.

    Seventeen people on the boat were rescued from the sea and seventeen others were found on the shore, the coastguard said.

    Reuters television footage from the scene showed attempts being made to resuscitate a girl on the beach and an unconscious child being carried from the water to a nearby ambulance.

    The coastguard did not specify the migrants’ nationalities.

    Read Also:Healthcare for immigrants in 30 languages

    Two children later died at hospital, he said, adding that search and rescue activities were continuing.

    Turkey became one of the main launch points for more than a million migrants taking the sea route to EU territory in 2015, many fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

    The influx of migrants was drastically curtailed by a 2016 accord between Ankara and the EU, after hundreds died crossing to Greek islands a few miles off the Turkish shore.

    Mediterranean arrivals to the bloc, including refugees making the longer and more perilous crossing from North Africa to Italy, totaled 172,301 in 2017, down from 362,753 in 2016 and 1,015,078 in 2015, according to UN data.

    NAN

  • African Migrants rejected by Italy were tortured, raped – UN

    African migrants rejected by Italy in a standoff with the European Union on Aug. 15, said they had been held by smugglers for up to two years in Libya and many had been beaten, tortured and raped, the UN said on Tuesday.

    The 150 migrants, mainly Eritreans and Somalis, were rescued in the Mediterranean but waited 10 days while
    Italy’s anti-immigrant government refused to let them disembark, until Ireland, Albania and the Vatican
    agreed to accept them.

    A further 27 unaccompanied minors and 13 people needing urgent hospital treatment had earlier been allowed ashore in Italy, whose government had threatened to cut funds to the European Union unless other states took in the migrants.

    The UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said its staff had gathered testimony from the migrants.

    All were malnourished and exhausted and said they had been held against their will in Libya for up to two years, IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a UN briefing in Geneva.

    “In Libya they complained that many had been beaten and tortured by smugglers and traffickers seeking ransom money from their families in their countries of origin,” he said.

    “Italian doctors who attended all the women … reported that many of them said they had been raped while in Libya.”

    He said IOM believed thousands of migrants were still being detained – held in safehouses or warehoused, but getting people to the shore had recently become more difficult because of violence in the west of the country.

    A drop in the value of the Libyan dinar had also made it more difficult for sub-Saharan Africans hoping to earn enough in Libya to fund their sea voyage to Europe, prompting the smugglers to look for other nationalities with more resources.

    Italian Interior Minister Salvini, who has led a popular crackdown against immigration since his government took office in June, has said he was under investigation by a Sicilian prosecutor for abuse of office, kidnapping and illegal arrest over the migrant standoff.

  • Libya to close four immigrant shelters

    Libya to close four immigrant shelters

    Libya’s Illegal Immigration Agency on Thursday issued a decision to close four shelters in western Libya, without giving a specific reason.

    The chief of the Illegal Immigration Agency Brig.-Gen Mohamed Beshr described the decision, which came days after his meeting with Francesco Masini, envoy of the Dutch Foreign Minister, as being in the interest of the public and the department’s work organisation.

    The topics discussed at the meeting were the contributions pledged by the Netherlands and the maintenance of immigrant shelters in Libya.

    Libyan immigrant reception centers have housed thousands of migrants, mostly Africans, rescued in the Mediterranean on boats while attempting to cross to European shores.

    Sheltering illegal immigrants in Libya has been suffering major problems, particularly in equipment and infrastructure. 

    NAN

  • Italy to deploy 470 troops to tackle traffickers in Niger

    Italy to deploy 470 troops to tackle traffickers in Niger

    Italy aims to deploy up to 470 troops to Niger to help tackle traffickers, the military General Staff said.

    Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on December 24 that some of the 1,400 Italian troops now stationed in Iraq could be transferred to the Sahel region in West Africa, which includes Niger, after victories against Islamist militants in Iraq.

    Gentiloni said the redeployed troops could also help to combat terrorism in the Sahel.

    The military said in a statement that a reconnaissance mission was underway in Niger to help decide the scale of the assistance, which the African country’s government has requested but which still needs to be approved by Italy’s parliament.

    The general staff said if the necessary approval is given, Italy would aim to gradually send up to 470 troops, probably posting an average of 250 over the course of a year.

    Read also: Dogara leads Nigerian delegation  to Italy over Human Trafficking

    “The aim of the mission is to increase the operational capacity of the Niger forces and put them in a position to guarantee stability in the area and fight illegal trafficking of migrants,” the military added.

    Italy’s president dissolved parliament on Thursday ahead of an election due in March, but lawmakers will continue to meet, and could approve Gentiloni’s request to transfer the personnel.

    Italy is especially keen to help tackle the people-smuggling gangs because it has borne the brunt of seaborne illegal migration to Europe from Africa.

    No fewer than 600,000 people have made the perilous journey across the central Mediterranean from Libya in the past four years.

    Arrivals have fallen sharply since officials working for the UN-backed government in Tripoli persuaded smugglers to stop boats leaving and the Libyan coastguard stepped up interceptions at sea.

    (Reuters/NAN)

  • Let us stop our children perishing in Sahara and Mediterranean

    Let us stop our children perishing in Sahara and Mediterranean

    It has now become a regular occurrence for young Nigerians to be deported back home from different parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas. Some of them are part of the multitude being quartered on an island in Papua-New Guinea following refusal by Australia to allow their boats to land in their country. This uncontrolled migration of our people to near and distant countries has become an embarrassment for Nigeria and the African continent. Several Nigerians are in jail in China and many are facing capital penalties in some countries in South-east Asia and in South Asia where drug trafficking is punishable by death. I was surprised to read that Nigerians were also being deported from Iceland. What the hell is any Nigerian doing in frigid Iceland? Of course we know why this is happening. It is probably due to economic hardship at home and the breakdown of the extended family system which in the past provided a cushion against economic hardship. On top of this is the fact that our job opportunities are not expanding in tandem with the thousands if not millions streaming out of our secondary and tertiary institutions. Our educational institutions are not training people for self-employment but rather for the elusive white collar jobs in government bureaucracy and offices of commercial and financial institutions.

    Agriculture which would have provided a safety valve still employs antediluvian tools and implements our grandparents used to till the ground and expect young people to embrace the sector. These back breaking agricultural practices are no longer attractive to young people. Mechanization of agriculture seems to be one of the ways governments can help solve the problem of unemployment driving our young people to the perilous journeys across the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. While it is true that lack of opportunities at home is largely responsible for this dangerous migration and human wastage because it is well known that close to 50 percent of those who leave Nigeria reach their target countries safely, many die in the desert as a result of their unpreparedness for the harsh conditions in the desert. Others are killed by the various militant gangs roaming the open spaces not dominated by government presence. Many who reach the shores of the Mediterranean are thrown into the sea during the journey to Europe.

    What are the ages of these young people? We are told they are between 14 and 35. Some can neither read nor write. Some only have primary education while some are secondary school graduates who find it difficult to progress due to poor financial situation of their parents while others are graduates of our tertiary institutions like Advanced Teachers Colleges, polytechnics and universities. Quite a large proportion are underage teenage girls who are being trafficked into brothels in continental European countries. I personally saw young Nigerian girls lining the sides of intercity roads in one of my visits to Italy. In Paris and Rome, one is ashamed to see grown up men usually from francophone West Africa, southern Sudan and East Africa making nuisances of themselves hawking all kinds of stuff to tourists. This kind of sight is very degrading because it demeans the stature of the black man everywhere. One also finds this kind of people on the streets of New York selling all sorts of things that may be stolen goods. Nigerians have not gone this far. But I am told our people are already involved in the drug trade in places like Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. I do not know if any of our people have been killed in the President Rodrigo Duterte-led war against drug traffickers in the Philippines.

    Recently, the bodies of 25 young girls were discovered in the Mediterranean. Their ages range between 14 and 18. They were said to have come from Nigeria and Niger republic. But I suspect they were all Nigerians. The governor of Edo State also recently welcomed home about 100 deportees from Libya. Most of them were girls who I must say are lucky to be alive. In some cases, their parents sold their houses to give to these children for their transportation to Europe for work as domestics. This is what their recruiters told them. Some of these girls after having been duped were taken to shrines to take oaths of allegiances to their Nigerian patrons. If they succeed in smuggling them to Europe, they were beholden to work for them for years before they could become free to work for themselves. If caught they were forbidden to say a word to implicate their traffickers. This is some kind of modern slavery. What I find galling is that some parents either out of ignorance or poverty collude with those taking their children into slavery. Some of the girls also go into it with their eyes wide open knowing they are being recruited into European brothels. We knew this through the wonderful work Mrs Eki Igbinedion, the wife Lucky Igbinedion erstwhile governor of Edo State did when her husband was at the helm of affairs in the state. It is a shame that she was not encouraged to continue her work of enlightenment about this problem in the state as soon as her husband left power.

    The problem of teenage girls being recruited was and is still concentrated in a few states like Edo, Delta and Anambra states. No one is sure about why. But I suspect previous participants in this odious trade return home with money without telling the truth about what they went through to get the money and others then followed them. But why these states and other states in the south-east? My guess is that some kind of western education is much deeper here than other parts of Nigeria and because of the capitalist disposition of the people there, the desire for rapid upward mobility which only money can provide drive the people to want to have money by all means.

    Migration is a feature of human society. The so called push-pull factor drives people from one place to another. The problem nowadays unlike in the past is the rising tide of racism in the western world where people of different skin colour are not welcome. Even on the continent of Africa, we treat ourselves with hostility.  Ghana and Nigeria in the late seventies and eighties expelled nationals of each other back home as economic undesirables. Xenophobia against other Africans and particularly against Nigerians is the regular phenomenon in South Africa. With advancing technology and particularly robotics, there is a growing dearth of routine jobs for nationals of countries in the western world with the result of hostility to outsiders who come to compete with locals with the few jobs available. In short, there are no jobs except highly skilled jobs in technology, engineering, the biological and physical sciences and medicine and nursing. Service industries like banking, computer sciences and accounting still offer possibility of employment for highly qualified and knowledgeable Africans. The point I want to make is that long term prognosis of the horrible unemployment situation for our youth is not very good. This is not only sad but dangerous bearing in mind that perhaps 70 percent of our population is below 30 years of age.

    We have to make our environment investment friendly and embark on industrially adding value to our agricultural produce. We must also embark on mechanized agriculture to ensure food security and surplus for export. To avoid impending explosion, we as a people must prevail on our governments to face squarely this problem by investing our national resources properly not only to take care of the present population but those coming after us. The growing criminality in our countries is a pointer to what is to come if we don’t take care of our people and prepare for an uncertain future. The rampant cases of kidnapping, armed brigandage, armed robbery and violence everywhere as if we are already a failed state are manifestation of deep seated malaise in our country. The case of Nigeria is particularly concerning in the overdependence on hydrocarbons export which the advancing technology and the concern for the environment would soon make unprofitable. We must act quickly now that there is still some room to manoeuvre to declare a national emergency on youth unemployment and attendant violence. If we tarry, it may be too late a few years from now.

  • Buhari orders immediate repatriation of Nigerians in Libya

    Buhari orders immediate repatriation of Nigerians in Libya

    President Muhammadu Buhari  has ordered the immediate  repatriation of  Nigerians stranded in Libya and other parts of the world for rehabilitation.

    This declaration was made in Abidjan, according to a statement issued on Wednesday by Malam Garba Shehu, President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity

    According to him, the president made this known in an interactive session with members of the Nigerian Community in Cote D’ Ivoire.

    The President vowed to reduce the number of Nigerians heading for Europe illegally through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea by providing basic social amenities such as education, healthcare, and food security at home, Garba said in the statement.

    According to him, the president said that all necessary steps would be taken to stem the tide of illegal migration by Nigerians.

    He, however, noted that it is very difficult to know the origin of the people who died, while attempting the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, because of lack of documentation.

    “When it was announced that 26 Nigerians died recently in the Mediterranean, before they proved that they were all Nigerians they buried them.

    “The evidence I have from the Senior Special Assistant on Diaspora and Foreign Affairs, (Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa) is that only three of them were identified as Nigerians.

    “But I’ll not be surprised if the majority of them were Nigerians.

    “For people to cross the Sahara desert and Mediterranean through shanty boats… we will try and keep them at home.

    “Anybody who died in the desert and Mediterranean without documents; to prove that he is a Nigerian, there is absolutely nothing we can do.’’

    On the recent footage on the sale of Africans in Libya, he quotes the president as saying, that, “ it was appalling that some Nigerians (in the footage) were being sold like goats for few dollars in Libya.’’

    He said: “after 43 years of Gadhafi, why are they recruiting so many people from the Sahel including Nigerians? All they learned was how to shoot and kill.

    They didn’t learn to be electricians, plumbers or any other trade.’’

    On domestic issues, President Buhari told Nigerians in the Diaspora that “there is good news from home in the area of security, economy and anti-corruption.

    “We are not doing too badly in trying to secure the country, improve the economy and deal with corruption.

    “We are doing our best at all levels including security. It is absolute madness for people to blow others up in markets, churches, and mosques.’’

    According to him, no religion advocates violence, saying that “Justice is the basic thing all religions demand and you can’t go wrong if you do it.’’

    On food security, the President said that his vision of repositioning Nigeria as a food-secure nation was on course as the “country is on the verge of attaining food security.’’

    Read also: 580 more Nigerians to return from Libya this week

    He attributed the development to positive agricultural reform programmes and bumper harvest occasioned by good weather.

    According to the President, interventions through the Anchors Borrows Programme of the CBN and the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative, among others, had been very successful in the agricultural reform initiative.

    “People have gone back to the farm. We got the CBN, agriculture minister and money was provided at very low interest to farmers and the farmers responded and it was very positive.

    “We are lucky that we are in a position to feed ourselves. So we are going to have food security in Nigeria earlier than anybody ever thought,’’ he noted.

    The President advised Nigerians in Cote D’ Ivoire to be good ambassadors in their host country, warning that the Embassy would not hesitate to repatriate those who tarnish the image of the country abroad.

    NAN