Germany to repatriate 30,000 illegal Nigerian migrants
Thursday May 17 2018
The German government has made a proposal to repatriate more than 30,000 illegal Nigerians migrants.
Nigeria’s Foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama, revealed the plan when he met with the Security Adviser to the President of Germany, Dr Jan Hecker, in Abuja on Wednesday.
The proposal, Mr Onyeama said, is predicated on perceived failures and slow pace of the current system of repatriation.
He added that it would involve both the Nigerian embassies and consulate and the German immigration office.
Their satisfaction
"They don’t have enough faith and confidence in the process that we have at the moment for the repatriation process.,’’ he said.
"They want to propose a completely new process of repatriation, known as Return and Re-admission.”
Mr Onyeama said that in the last two years, only about 200 Nigerians had returned to the country from Germany.
”Germans were not happy that the system we have in place at the moment is certainly not working to their satisfaction,” he said.
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The minister explained that the initiative essentially meant that once all the legal processes were exhausted, Nigeria should trust them (Germany), to make the right decision on who to repatriate.
He added that once the decision was taken, Germany would bring the affected persons to Nigeria without the involvement of the latter's mission.
“They will bring them here to Nigeria and say we have gone through a process in Germany; these people are your nationals, they have exhausted all the legal processes, please take them.
Bilateral relations
”And it will be here on Nigeria territory that any possibility will then exist to say maybe that one is not or this one is not."
Mr Onyeama, while describing the proposal as a complete transformation of the current process, noted that Germany would issue the travel documents and be responsible for their journeys.
However, for the new process to be effected, Nigeria would have to make some changes in its laws.
Earlier, Dr Hecker said he was in Nigeria to see how both countries could intensify their bilateral relations and achieve good result, particularly on migration.