Deportation of Nigerians from Gabon and Cameroon

On Thursday, July 30 – just a day after President Muhammadu Buhari’s official visit to his Cameroonian counterpart, Paul Biya, to discuss modalities to end the Boko Haram insurgency – Cameroonian authorities rounded up and deported over 2,500 Nigerians. These included both illegal immigrants and refugees fleeing from the atrocities of Boko Haram. Cameroonian regional newspaper L’Oeil du Sahel even published a photograph of the mass deportation with Nigerians loaded into trucks and dumped at Sahuda Village in Mubi, a town on the Nigeria-Cameroon border.

Barely a week later, Nigerians woke up to the news of the deportation of over 500 Nigerians and other West African illegal immigrants from Gabon. A breakdown of the deportees indicates that 36 of them are Nigerians, 130 Malians, 87 Burkinabe, 51 Senegalese, 39 Nigeriens, 37 from Republic of Guinea, eight Ghanaians, 43 Togolese, 21 Beninese and three Gambians.

Just like the Cameroonian authorities, the Gabonese authorities brought the migrants in a ship and dumped them at the National Inland Waterways jetty in Calabar, Cross River State. Most of the deportees from Gabon were males and quite unlike the deportees from Cameroon, they had lived in Gabon for long periods and had established roots, with many of them married to Gabonese women with children. Curiously, they were all separated from their wives and children and deported alone. Also, a few of the deportees interviewed by newsmen insisted they had all the valid documentations to live in Gabon and were only deported as a result of issues or problems they had with some Gabonese.

That was not even the first deportation from Gabon. Barely over a month before, precisely on June 23, Gabonese authorities deported about 590 West Africans through the same Calabar waterways, citing the same lack of possession of valid travel documents by the deportees.

Unfortunately, there was no reaction or comment from the Nigerian government. In a way, this is an indictment of the government, especially on its inability to provide security and means of self-actualisation for its citizens. For years, the economic situation in Nigeria has continued to deteriorate to the extent that so many people battered and rendered hopeless by hard times now see their hopes for success just anywhere, so long as it is beyond the borders of this country.

In previous years, the desperation was to make it to Europe and America and the vast Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea separating North Africa and Southern Europe are littered with the graves and remains of thousands of Nigerians and other Africans who daily embark on the hell of a journey to cross to Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar and, more recently, the Libyan coastlines connecting Lampadusa in Italy.

In the last one year, the cases of African migrants threatening the Italian and Spanish coastlines and the thousands dying and being rescued at seas by the Italian and Spanish navies have elicited strong discussions and debates in the European Union. As of yet, no African country – or even the African Union or the African Human Rights Commission – has made any comments regarding the shameful issue. Of course, they have nothing to say since they are mostly responsible for the conditions that compelled the migrants to escape in search of greener pastures despite the huge risks involved.

We are consoled that the new regime of President Buhari has signalled its resolve to change the fortunes of the country and create the enabling environment for its citizens to flourish and thus arrest the emigration trend. While the government is at this task, we believe it has earned the moral right to speak up, show concern and demand justice for its citizens who are unfairly treated and degraded by other countries. A self-respecting state goes to every length possible to defend the integrity and rights of its citizens anywhere in the world. Nigeria must not be an exception.