The National Emergency Management Agency has said that 14,045 Nigerians have voluntarily been brought back home since a repatriation programme was started by the International Organisation for Migration in 2017.
Acting Coordinator for the Lagos Territorial Office, Ibrahim Farinloye, disclosed this while receiving a new batch of 161 returnees at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport on Thursday night.
He said, “This batch brought the total number of voluntary returnees from Libya to 14,045, which is made up of 8,200 males and 5,845 females.”
According to him, the breakdown of the returning Nigerians showed that there are 48 female adults, four female children, five female infants as well as 102 adult males, one male child and one infant male in the batch of persons brought back home last night.
One of the returnees, a 19-year old girl from Ondo State, told the News agency of Nigeria that she was forced to make the irregular migration to Europe through Libya, because she was unable to meet up with the responsibilities of caring for a child and a mother with mental health issues.
“I was left with the task of fending for my siblings, mother and my daughter. My mother’s relations and friends abandoned us. I was a tailoring apprentice after my husband left us.
“My mum was thrown out of the house because we could not afford to pay for rent,” she narrated.
