DEVELOPING STORY:
’90 Nigerians that Possess FAKE Documents, Expired Visa Deported from our country’-South African Government
* Involved in various Immigration violations
* ‘Most all-male deportees were living in South Africa without valid documents’-DSP Joseph Alabi, Lagos Airport Police spokesperson
BY ISHIOMA KELVIN, CONTRIBUTOR, JOHANNESBURG
SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT has embarked on a clean sweep of authenticating the residence validity of so many Nigerians presently in the country, to be certain that only people lawfully allowed to be in their country stays, while other undocumented Nigerians are made to face deportation.
Few days ago, 90 Nigerians were deported from South Africa for sundry immigration offences. Precisely last week Friday, for committing immigration-related offences, these Nigerians were forcefully put on plane as deportees.
The 90 deportees were dropped off from Johannesburg by a South African Airways flight at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) confirms.
Confirming these development, spokesperson for Lagos Airport Police command, DSP Joseph Alabi reportedly said that most of the all-male deportees were living in South Africa without valid documents.
For the records, this is the second mass deportation after a February 28 exercise when 97 Nigerians including two females were deported from South Africa.
Truth is, there is a growing number of Nigerian communities in South Africa. Some of them have suffered a series of xenophobic attacks in parts of Johannesburg and Pretoria since 2008.
For these attackers, they blame the Nigerians and other African nationals of involving in criminal activities in the country. Some others argue that mass deportation of Africans within the continent is rare.
So far, 258 Nigerians returned home from crisis-hit Libya as part of a voluntary repatriation exercise facilitated by the Nigerian government and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). 253 migrants had been repatriated earlier in April.
#Additional Reports by NAN