TheCable

A few hours after 144 Nigerians voluntarily returned from Libya, 257 others have made it back home.

The returnees arrived aboard a Libyan Airlines aircraft at about 1.30 am on Thursday.

Joseph Alabi, spokesperson for the Lagos airport police command, said they were assisted back to Nigeria by the International Organisation for Migration and the European Union.

“They comprised of 65 adult females, 179 adult males, seven children and six infants,” Alabi added.

He said four of the returnees have medical cases and have been taken away for treatment.

The returnees, he said, were received by officials of the National Emergency Management Agency, Nigerian Immigration Service, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered the evacuation of Nigerians stranded in Libya after a CNN report revealed the alleged slave trade going on in the country.

The federal ministry of foreign affairs had said, in a statement on Tuesday, that the country’s embassy in Libya has been visiting detention camps to identify Nigerians for registration.

The ministry said the embassy, in collaboration with the IOM, repatriates 250 migrants weekly and had returned 3,000 of them so far.

It also said the repatriation is a continuous exercise, adding that “the embassy will continue to engage the legitimate government in Libya and other stakeholders in addressing the plight of Nigerian migrants in that country”.