Speaking while receiving a fresh batch of Nigerians who arrived the country on Tuesday, the Director General of National Emergency Management Agency, has revealed how 826 Nigerians returned home after failed attempt to travel abroad.
File photo: Nigerian returnees
The National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, says a total of 826 Nigerians stranded in Libya while trying to get to Europe, voluntarily returned from the North African country in October.
The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, reports that the Director General of NEMA, Mustapha Maihajja, made the disclosure while receiving a fresh batch of 270 Nigerians who arrived the country on Tuesday.
Mr. Maihajja, represented by the South West Zonal Coordinator of the agency, Suleiman Yakubu, said the returnees were assisted back to Nigeria by the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, and the European Union, EU.
He said that the fresh batch added to 138 Nigerians earlier brought back on October 3; 257 on October 24 and 161 on October 26 made the total number of returnees in October 826.
The NEMA boss urged the returnees to contribute their quota to national development, stressing that the quest to build Nigeria required the support of all and sundry.
The new set of returnees arrived the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos at 7.30 p.m. aboard a Libyan Airline aircraft with registration number 5A-LAU.
They comprised 216 female adults, 13 teenage girls and five infants, while the male adults were 27, 18 were teenage boys, and nine, baby boys.
Other agencies which received the returnees were the Nigerian Immigration Service, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria and the Police.
(NAN)